Pied Piper

CHAPTER 23

Unaccustomed to an invitation for coffee from Boldt, Daphne Matthews found herself caught by surprise. Neither of them drank coffee, and they didn’t arrange secret meetings. Not any longer.

Du Jour, a small lunch cafe on First Avenue, offered yuppie chow and an expansive view of the bay. This choice also surprised her. Boldt leaned more toward tea and scones at the Four Seasons Olympic. He was known as a regular in the Garden Room.

He occupied a table pressed up against the huge glass window overlooking the bay and the lush green of the islands beyond. She bought herself a tea at the cafeteria-style counter, her eyes on Boldt, understanding immediately and with great certainty that something was terribly wrong. Liz, she thought.

As she approached, she noticed his slouched shoulders, the redness of his eyes and nose and his cup of tea, which was not steaming and had gone untouched. He hadn’t added the milk yet. She recognized grief when she saw it.

“Hey,” she said casually, pulling out her own chair. He didn’t stand. Not the Lou Boldt she knew.

“Ah!” he said, looking up at her woodenly, taking no time to express any kind of welcome. She felt unimportant. She sat down.

“I need a favor, Daffy, and it’s perfectly fine if you don’t want to do it, but if you’re willing to do it, to help me out, then all I ask is that you don’t ask any questions. None. Not one. It’s important for both of us, for everybody, that you not ask any questions.”

“Does that include now?”

He looked up at her and then to the door of the cafe. “That’s a question,” he informed her. He seemed to have aged a dozen years. Liz, she thought again. She felt sad. He had broken-frankly, she had expected it sooner.

“No questions at all?”

“Better that way,” he answered. “Safer.” A furtive check toward the front of the restaurant. Grief could cause strange behavior in the strongest of people.

“You can’t go back to the office looking like this,” she warned. “And that is not a question.”

He never quite got his clothes right, tending to carry a part of his last meal on them somewhere. The new breeds of permanent press were made with him in mind, but he stayed with natural fibers, all cottons and wools, and as a result looked like an unmade bed most of the time. He rarely shaved without missing a spot or two.

“I’ll pull it together,” he said.

“And keep it there?” she asked.

His eyes betrayed him. Her question brought threatening tears. He understood his own vulnerability. This was significant to her.

“Lou, one of the slogans I use is, ‘Dare to Share.’ It takes some nerve, but it’s worth the risk.” She waited a moment, hoping this might sink in, might trigger an effort. “Trust me. Please.”

He leaned the weight of his head into the crutch of his open palm, covering his mouth and stretching his eyes open grotesquely. He spoke through his fingers, muddying his speech. “It’s a favor is all. It’ll take you most of the rest of the day.”

“At the hospital? At home?”

“A drive.”

“A drive,” she repeated. “You and me? Me alone?”

“All questions,” he answered, his eyes betraying his pain.

She hated herself. “Let me start all over. Please, please forgive me. Let me just say yes. Whatever it is, whatever it entails: Yes. The answer is yes.”

“The thing is,” he explained in a lifeless drone, “I’m preoccupied with something else and Marina is out. It’s you, or Bear, or Dixie. I’m asking you first is all. It doesn’t mean you have to do it.”

“And I’m honored. I have already accepted,” Daphne reminded him. “I could use a drive.” She added, “Where to, what for?” Then she caught herself in another question and apologized softly. He needed soft at the moment.

“You remember the Lux-Wash up above Green Lake? The arson case?”

“Of course.”

“Be there in an hour.” He checked his watch. “One hour.”

She tensed at the request. Intelligence involved itself in a variety of complex investigations, from political corruption conspiracies to eavesdropping on the Asian mob. Was this work-related or personal? Had she gotten it wrong? “One hour at the Lux-Wash,” she repeated dryly.

“I can make it sooner if you want. But no later,” he cautioned.

“An hour is fine. Plenty of time.”

“An hour then. Park to the east out on Eightieth. I’ll pull past. I won’t honk or anything; you’ll have to be watching. You’ll come in behind me and we pull into the line that way: me directly ahead of you. Decline the interior cleaning. That means you can stay in your car and won’t go into the waiting room. You’ll need a full tank. Maybe a snack. Animal Crackers,” he blurted out, as if picking her snack.

“Miles,” she said, suddenly understanding. She had been around the boy enough to make that connection.

His eyes flashed angrily. “Maybe an apple. Granny Smiths.”

“Got it.” It was Miles. Sarah too? she wondered. She wanted to ask about car seats, but didn’t.

Genuinely concerned, he asked her, “You’re sure you don’t mind?” He glanced once again toward the cash register as if expecting someone else.

“One hour at the Lux-Wash,” she repeated.

“Do exactly as I’ve told you,” he stated harshly. Then he stood, the chair legs crying against the floor.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Don’t follow out for several minutes.”

“No.”

“That’s important. Several minutes.”

“I understand.” She didn’t at all.

He walked out of the cafe, filling the light in the doorway, moving into silhouette, which removed all identity. It was raining again. Gray begetting gray. She wanted springtime. She wanted Boldt well again. She kept track of the time on her watch, knowing from experience that minutes took forever to pass when she was rattled. A ferry sounded, its call haunting and lonely. It reminded her of him, vacant and distant and casting no reflection.

She checked her watch again. Three minutes had passed. In fifty-seven more she was due at the car wash.

She waited for him, parked on 80th Street North, her attention trained on the outboard rearview mirror. He was five minutes late, which was not like him. She understood the car wash routine. They had used similar tricks before. Life as a cop was part deception. Of all the cops on the force, she was the most devoted to Boldt.

His Chevy pulled past. No acknowledgment. She couldn’t see into his car through the light drizzle, but she suspected Miles was in there.

She remained attentive as she followed him into the car wash entrance.

The Chevy rounded the back corner, and an attendant, armed with a long vacuum hose, arrived at the driver’s door carrying an umbrella. Boldt waved him off.

Daphne pushed the SEND button on the cell phone at the same time as she rolled down her driver’s window and also declined the interior work. Two in a row was too much for the attendant. He looked at her with a slack jaw and asked, “No?”

“No,” she answered definitely, rolling up the window and hoping Boldt would answer his own cellular.

The Chevy pulled into the foaming shower of soap and spray followed a moment later by her Honda, both cars swallowed by the machinery. The rinse water followed, and immediately behind that, powerful jets of air that drove rivulets of water out across the hood and up the windshield like a silver fan. Within that blur, Boldt emerged from his car carrying a large child seat with his son strapped inside. In his other hand he carried a duffle bag. The exchange happened quickly, and in the bending, distorted light of the car wash, Boldt appeared to jump across the front of her car and, suddenly, was wrenching open her side door and working the car seat into the back and fixing a seat belt across it as he moved to keep pace with the wash conveyor. He handed her a crushed and wrinkled sheet of paper saying something about it being “their address.” He told her not to stop at the end of the wash-he would pay for her. He added, “You’re not to use your cell phone for any reason.” The car door thumped shut. Soaking wet, Boldt hurried and reentered the Chevy just before it emerged from the throat of the machinery.

At a red light she reached down and unfolded the piece of paper he had handed her. Katherine Sawyer. Boldt’s sister. A street address in Wenatchee, Washington. A phone number. A long drive ahead of her.

Where was Sarah? she wondered. A moment later, another, more terrifying thought occurred: Was this the question Boldt did not want asked?