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Bellingham, Washington

Sunday, March 8, 2020

The next day, Kyle took charge of Sunday morning breakfast. We had bacon and waffles—not the kind that would have required

the use of a waffle iron, which we definitely don’t own. No, these were frozen ones Kyle had dragged home from his Costco

shopping trip—the kind that pops up out of a toaster, which we do have. As for his Costco bacon cooked in the microwave? It

was perfectly crisp without a smidgeon of grease left on the stovetop. It was beginning to dawn on me that having a teenager

around wasn’t half bad.

After getting home the night before and once Kyle had disappeared into his room, I had brought Mel into the picture and laid out my plan. Cops can compel suspects to provide DNA samples by obtaining the appropriate warrants. Private investigators can’t request warrants, but, like the clown says in The Little Engine That Could —there’s more than one way over the mountain to Yon. A handmade quilt would be covered with the quilter’s touch DNA, and,

in this case, my Visa card would take the place of a warrant.

“And you really think Constance Herzog is your killer?” Mel asked.

“I do,” I said.

“And you’re willing to buy a quilt to get a sample of her DNA to prove it?”

“Yup,” I said. “It beats digging through her trash cans. If she actually made the quilt, skin cells, containing her DNA, should

be all over it.”

That sounded fine and dandy until we went online and studied Constance Herzog’s inventory of available quilts. They were jaw-droppingly

expensive. The one that caught Mel’s eye contained a striking black-and-white silhouette of Seattle’s skyline with the Space

Needle front and center. It was a view that almost mirrored the one from the bedroom window of our old condo. The problem

was it cost a cool two thousand bucks.

Mel started shaking her head. “You can’t be serious,” she said. “You’re going to spend this much on a quilt on a hunch that

the person who made it is your killer?”

“Go big or go home,” I said. “Besides, what I’m really buying is the DNA.”

With the decision made, I scrolled down to the “contact us” part of the web page and sent an email.

My wife’s birthday is next week. She loves your Space Needle silhouette. Is that quilt still available? If so, would it be possible for me to purchase it and then drop by to pick it up rather than having it shipped? I’d be glad to drive down from Bellingham to get it as soon as possible.

Beau Beaumont

As I pressed send, I was somewhat leery about having used my real name for fear she might remember me from days past when

I was with Seattle PD, but that couldn’t be helped. I intended to pay for the purchase with my credit card, which would have

my name on it, too. If she somehow made the connection to Scotty, I was fully prepared to pass him off as my beloved nephew.

Once that was done and since it was too late to call, I sent Todd an email asking him to do a complete background check on

Constance Herzog and on her father, too, since I had reason to suspect that if she’d grown up in a family plagued by domestic

violence, that might be the source of her intense interest in the same.

After sending both messages off into the ethers, I had crossed my fingers and Mel and I had gone to bed.

There was no response to either of my emails when I got up on Sunday morning, and the same held true by the time we finished

our Eggo breakfast. I was doing the Sunday crosswords when an email alert came in from Ron Peters, and it wasn’t good news.

No luck on moving the needle on your cases. The powers that be in Homicide are concerned that if they reopen those three without

having an actual named suspect, it’ll unleash a flood of similar claims.

Sorry I couldn’t do more right now, but keep me posted.

Ron

Disappointment must have shown on my face.

“What?” Mel asked.

I read Ron’s email aloud.

“So what’s the problem?” Mel asked. “If your suspicions about Constance Herzog are right, you’re about to do exactly what

they’re asking—you’ll be handing over a named suspect. Once you provide them with that along with her DNA and the physical

evidence linking the three cases together, they won’t have any choice. They’ll have to reopen them if for no other reason

than to mark them closed.”

That’s the thing about Mel. She manages to cut straight to the heart of the matter, as in, go ahead and solve them already!

Now all I had to do was wait to hear back on my proposed purchase of a Constance Herzog original, but I’m not much good at

sitting around waiting. In the old days I would have passed the time by belting down a shot or two of McNaughton’s. Instead

I took Sarah for a walk.

We were heading back to the barn when a call came in from Marisa Young. I answered with a question. “Where are you?”

“Back home in Fountain Hills,” she said. “My flight from Portland was first thing this morning. I just got back from Sky Harbor

and wanted to let you know what’s going on.”

“How was it?” I asked, more than half dreading the answer.

“It was amazing!” Marisa told me. “Absolutely amazing. I was sitting in the bar by the fireplace when she came into the room.

I saw her stop and look around, and then she walked straight over to me. ‘I know you,’ she said. Then she reached into her

bag and pulled out the teddy bear. ‘You’re the one who gave me this!’

“I couldn’t believe that she still had it,” Marisa continued. “And the fact that she recognized my face blew me away. She sat down, and we spent the next ten minutes crying. The people in the bar probably thought we were nuts, sitting there bawling like a pair of babies over a tattered, one-eared, one-eyed teddy bear. So thank you, Beau, for making that embarrassing crying jag possible.”

It was not the answer I had been expecting.

“Did I ever mention that I spent fifteen years as a high school guidance counselor?” Marisa asked after a momentary pause.

“Not that I remember. Why?”

“Because,” she replied, “that’s a job that requires an ability to recognize the difference between someone who’s telling the

truth and someone who’s lying. Given Serena’s history, I was expecting that she’d try feeding me a bunch of bull, but she

didn’t. She told me about the night she woke up with someone pounding on the door and being rushed out of the house and into

a car, and all the while she was holding on to her teddy bear.

“Over the years she kept asking her mother about what happened to the ‘nice lady in that other house,’ the one who gave her

the teddy bear. Her mother claimed that Serena was mistaken and there wasn’t any ‘nice lady’—that she was the one who had

given her Mindy.”

Yup , I thought, sounds like WITSEC all right.

“They ended up living a tough life. Tricia worked the streets. From the time Serena was five or so, she remembers being left

home alone at night with no supervision. At school there was a lot of bullying because she ate free lunches and wore clothing

from Goodwill. And it was one of the kids at school who told her that her mother didn’t have a real job—that she was a prostitute.”

By then, Sarah and I were back inside the house. Since Mel was nowhere in sight, I guessed she was probably doing her Sunday stint in the soaking tub. As I shed my jacket, my face flushed with embarrassment over law enforcement’s involvement in all this. Only a mindless, faceless government bureaucracy would think it would be a good safety measure to dump a young single mom on the opposite side of the country in a place where she had no friends or relations to offer support. I had been a homicide cop as opposed to a school guidance counselor, but I, too, could see this story had the ring of truth about it.

“It sounds terrible,” I said at last.

“I’m sure it was,” Marisa agreed, “and it got worse once Tricia started using drugs. A lot of the time the only food Serena

had was what she got at school. On weekends, she went hungry except for what she could find dumpster diving behind fast-food

restaurants. During those years, though, there were people who took pity on her and who would buy her an occasional meal or

slip her a bit of cash now and then. Given the neighborhoods they lived in, some of those folks were pretty dodgy themselves,

including a guy who made his living creating fake IDs, mostly for illegal immigrants.”

“The one who created the Caroline Richards ID?” I asked.

“You’ve got it,” Marisa agreed, “but you’re getting ahead of the story, and it’s almost like history repeating itself. Like her mother, Serena ran away at a very young age. When she was arrested for prostitution a couple of years later, her mom bailed her out of jail, but that was the last interaction between them. Serena never saw Tricia again. Instead, because of Serena’s good looks, she moved to Seattle where she was able to sign on with an escort service, which eventually led to her meeting a guy who still, to this day, is a respected local businessman as well as a mover and shaker in King County politics. He was completely smitten by her and kept her as a side dish for a number of years, paying her rent and buying her groceries.”

“Did she happen to mention a name?”

“Eventually. She conveniently left his name out of the story the first time around, but I managed to pry it out of her. He

claimed he loved her and said that when his kids were older, he’d divorce his wife and marry Serena. She believed him, of

course, but when she got tired of waiting, she decided that if she got pregnant, maybe she could speed up the timeline. That

plan backfired big-time.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Instead of marrying her, he kicked her out.”

“That’s right. It’s also when she got in touch with one of her friends from the old days, the guy who provided her with a

new identity. Then she went on dating sites looking for a possible daddy replacement, because she was afraid she wouldn’t

be any better at raising a child on her own than her mother had been. Even so, she didn’t want to give up the baby and she

didn’t want the child to grow up without a father. That’s the real reason she zeroed in on Jeremy. Apparently he looks a lot

like her ex.” Marisa paused and let out a long sigh before adding, “The whole thing is completely heartbreaking.”

I couldn’t have agreed more. Aloud I said, “Suspicions confirmed then. Jeremy isn’t the father.”

“No, he’s not.”

“But he’s planning on marrying her. Does she even care about him?”

“Care about him?” Marisa said. “Yes. Love him? Probably not. She said she liked being around Kyle and his friends because they were so much closer to her own age. She told me she ended up making a pass at one of them, but Kyle saw what was going on. She was afraid he’d tell his father. Instead, he ran away and went to live with you. She says Jeremy has been so devastated at the idea of losing his family that she’s worried he might become suicidal.”

The idea of Jeremy possibly committing suicide gave me pause. Suicide is the kind of death that leaves families forever asking

themselves where they went wrong and what could they have done to prevent it. But before I had a chance to say anything, Marisa

charged on.

“So I made her a deal,” she continued. “I told her she’s welcome to come live with me. Between my divorce settlement and my

inheritance, I’m in pretty good financial shape, but it’s no free ride. There are a number of conditions she has to meet.

Number one—she has to go home and tell Jeremy the truth about all this because, if she doesn’t tell him, I will. Number two—she

has to resume her original identity. I told her that her father died years ago. No one is looking for her anymore. That’s

all over and done with. She needs to go back to being Serena del Veccio. That way she’ll have a real identity as opposed to

a phony one. She’ll be able to get a passport if she wants to, and she might even be able to travel.”

“What’s number three?” I asked.

“Once Jeremy knows the truth about her and the baby, if they decide they want to stay in a relationship, fine. If they call

it quits, then she’s welcome to come live with me, but as long as she’s living under my roof, she has to go back to school.

She has to get her GED and start taking college courses. I told her that I’m prepared to take her in and look after her and

the baby until she’s ready to be on her own, but if any of those conditions aren’t met, we’re done.”

“It sounds like you made her a hell of a good offer,” I said. “What did she say?”

“When she left the hotel in Portland last night, she said she was on her way home to Ashland to tell Jeremy. I told her to let me know what they decide. If she wants to come to Arizona, I’ll fly her down. Jeremy gave her a car to use, but she doesn’t have one of her own. I’m waiting for a call back, but so far she’s maintaining radio silence.”

Once Marisa stopped talking, it took a moment or two for me to respond. “Wow,” I said finally. “This is all really generous

of you.”

“It’s not generosity,” she said. “It’s called looking after family.”

“But it’s also looking after my family,” I told her. “You may be giving Jeremy an opportunity to set things right with his

wife and kids. So thank you for that.”

“You don’t need to thank me,” Marisa said. “Your efforts on behalf of your family have given me the answers for mine that

I’ve been seeking for years. I’m the one who should be thanking you, and if Serena decides to take herself out of the picture,

maybe Jeremy’s wife and kids will be able to forgive him.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I replied. “Hooking up with Caroline Richards wasn’t the first time Jeremy strayed off the marital

path, and I’m not sure my daughter is willing to give him another chance.”

“Well,” Marisa said, “that’ll be up to them then, won’t it.”

“Yes, it will,” I agreed. “Let me know what happens.”

“I’ll be in touch first thing,” she said, and that was the end of the phone call.

Right then Mel emerged from the bedroom wearing her plush bathrobe and with her wet hair wrapped in a towel.

“Who was that on the phone?” she asked. “And are you okay? You look a little off—like you’ve just had a shock of some kind.”

“I’ve had a shock all right,” I said, “and you’re not going to believe it.”