“Well, I’ll have to stop and say hello. Are you going to bake them some muffins?” Penn liked playing the welcome wagon hostess if she thought the neighbors were worth talking to.
“Already baked. I thought we could take them over together before we leave for the meeting.” She pointed to the cake. “What do you think?”
“Incredible. I thought it was just chocolate, but that’s mocha, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “I used for shots of espresso in the batter. And a little espresso flavoring in the buttercream.”
We finished our dessert and then, gathering our things and the basket of muffins, we walked across the street. We weren’t exactly on a cul-de-sac, but the street that we lived on was narrow with very little through traffic. As we approached the door, Penn reached out and rang the bell. A moment later, a woman answered. She was a little shorter than I was, with a petite build, and mousy brown hair caught up in a messy bun. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt and leggings and when she saw Penn, she broke into a smile.
“Hey, fancy seeing you again,” she said.
“I thought I just drop these off to welcome you to the neighborhood. This is my roommate Kyann. She owns the house we live in.” Penn handed her the basket of cranberry studded muffins.
Lena lifted the corner of the cloth inhaled deeply. “They smell incredible. Would you like to come in?”
I shook my head. “Thank you, but we have an appointment we need to keep. Welcome to the neighborhood. If you need anything just let us know.”
“Thank you. We’ll see you later? Maybe we can have dinner together sometime. You can fill us in on the neighborhood,” she added.
“Definitely,” I said. Penn and I waved goodbye and headed back across the street to my car. I glanced over my shoulder at the house, hoping that Lena and George would prove to be as friendly as they seemed. As we headed out into the darkening night, I hope the rest of the evening would prove as easy as meeting the neighbors had been.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Tetrachordian Temple meeting was being held in the basement of a local recreation center. The place was located in North Seattle, but the rec center was older. It wasn’t falling apart, or in a particularly bad neighborhood, but it had the feel of decayed gentrification.
At one point, the building had been revitalized, but over the past decade or so, once again the neighborhood was slowly falling into disrepair.
Oh, the houses surrounding the rec center were nice enough, and there were no bars on the windows or doors like there were in south Seattle, but the people who lived here probably couldn’t afford to sell. There were no houses to move to that would be in their price range at this point. They would live out their lives in the slow decline of a city whose economy was rapidly outstripping the wages of those who kept it going.
Most of the houses had been built during the 60s, on sloping lots that ended with a high concrete retaining wall, and a long narrow set of concrete stairs leading up to chain-link fences that surrounded the yard. But the rec center was level with the sidewalk.
On the corner, with a small parking lot attached to the side, the building stood two stories high, with a basement, and at one time had probably proven popular among the neighborhood children. But now, the children had grown up and moved far away. And their parents continue to live here, growing older like the houses they lived in.
“There are so many neighborhoods like this around the city,” I said. “All the houses are still nice enough, or they would be with some TLC. But I guess it probably makes sense to raze them and put in a series of accessibility-friendly condos, priced for the middle-income sector of the city.”
Penn gave a small shrug. “Ideally, but I doubt that it will happen. The developers are greedy, and the people who live here love their space, I doubt if they’d want to move into a multiunit facility. Besides, think of the character that neighborhoods like this add to Seattle.”
“Maybe so, but unless a younger set moves in and takes over, these houses are going to eventually be empty and then you’re going to have another neighborhood sprawl of urban decay.” I pushed open the door to the rec center and we wandered inside.
A bulletin board to our left showed the activities for the week, and as I peeked at them, I realized that this place had gone from a kids’ center to a senior center.
Next to the bulletin board was a reception booth. “Hi,” I said to the woman manning the desk. “Can you tell me where the meeting for the Tetrachordian Temple is being held?”
She smiled, consulting a clipboard. “In the basement, room 2E.” She pointed to a sandwich board pointing toward the basement door which announced the meeting, along with the time. It looked homemade, although whoever did the calligraphy had done a fairly nice job.
“Thank you,” I said.
“No problem. We’re open till eleven, should you have any other questions,” she said.
“Have you thought of our stories?” Penn asked as we headed toward the basement.
“I thought we’d mainly just listen tonight, to get a feel for what’s going on. We can just say we work in an office together.” I paused and then added, “On the way here, I decided to do as you suggested. I’m going to call the FBSI and give them all the information on Give A Hands Up. It’s too big of an organization for us to take on by ourselves.”
“I think that’s best. It’s also been entrenched far too long for us to make much of a dent. The FBSI has investigative tools and tricks to which we don’t have access. And there are too many people involved. Too many chances for someone to rat us out, and if we compromised our investigation, a lot more people could die and we’d be responsible.”
We clattered down the stairs and Penn pointed to the right. Down the hall, four doors to the left, there was a sign matching the one upstairs.
“Well, here we are. Shall we go in?” She waited for my nod, then pulled open the door and walked into the room in front of me.
