Suspect: Raymond Darke
Age:Early fifties?
Occupation:Mystery author
Education:Graduated from the University of Washington (according to his public biography)
Physical description:Caucasian. Slightly overweight. Possible rosacea? (Red nose)
Personality traits:Wealthy. Famous. Desire to stay out of the public eye; values privacy. Wears blue baseball cap and sunglasses in public... to hide his identity?
Other details:Books show a familiarity with legal procedure. Opera fan. Vinyl record collector. (Further investigation required... with Daniel?)
“Does any of that help?” Grandpa asked.
“Possibly. I’ll do some snooping. But right now I’m going to get some sleep.”
“I’ll be curious to know what you find,” Cass added.
Grandpa gave me an approving nod. “This is an excellent summer mystery you’ve found, Birdie. Much better than the toxic leaking sewage pipe—and probably better for your health.”
Funny, but it felt twice as risky.
“You know, that sounds like an interesting case. Why don’t you take it?”
—Nora Charles,The Thin Man(1934)
9
Daniel’s phone number on my hand didn’t wash off with soap. I had to tear the bathroom apart, hunting down rubbing alcohol, to remove the ink—and even then, the numbers were still faintly visible when I woke the next afternoon. That irritated me. I thought about using those numbers to text Daniel a piece of my mind about his tattooing them on my hand, but I decided to wait until I saw him at work, where I could also tell him about Darke and the opera record lead. But when I got to the hotel, I realized it was Daniel’s day off. I wasn’t sure if I was irritated or disappointed.
Maybe a little of both.
Unlike the previous night, the hotel wasn’t busy at all. Two of the staff called in sick, but Melinda seemed too tired to care. Maybe pregnancy was wearing her down. Or maybe it was Chuck, who insisted on telling everyone on staff some stupid dirty joke, which was bad enough, but he kept getting the punch line wrong. I just ignored him and read my emergency purse book behind the desk in a desperate attempt to pass the time and stay awake.
When the night finally ended and the shift change came, I was exhausted from boredom and starving for hot food. After swapping out the Cascadia employee blazer for my favorite navy gabardine trench coat, I headed down the marble lobby floor and exited the hotel.
Chilly night air was wrapped in a light fog that had rolled in from the bay; it smelled of brine and clung to the tops of buildings and streetlights like smoky halos. A light drizzle was starting, so I tugged up the buttoned-on hood of my coat and scanned the street.Be aware of your environment, Grandpa always warned me. First Avenue was quiet, only a few cars and a street cleaner. I spotted a familiar elderly homeless man who Joseph said was friendly, and under a fog-ringed streetlight, perched on a newspaper rack like a raven, I spotted someone else.
Daniel?
I blinked, but he was still there, smiling beneath a black hoodie. I couldn’t trust that. Maybe I’d fallen asleep in the employee break room and this was just a mirage. I sneaked a look at my hand and flexed my fingers. One, two, three, four, five—
Not a dream.
“Hello, Birdie,” he called.
“What are you doing out here?” I called back. “You’re not on the schedule.”
He jumped from the newspaper rack, landing gracefully on black Converse low-tops, and walked over to me. “I was running an errand.”
At four thirty in the morning?
“And I thought you might want company on your way to the ferry, what with all the crazy kooks you could encounter out here at this time of day,” he said. “Are you mad? If you don’t want me here, tell me to leave and I’ll go. I’m only realizing just now that I could be perceived as one of said kooks.”
“Areyou a kook?”
“A good-intentioned kook?” he said, shrugging slowly with his palms upward. “A lovable kook? Definitely not a chain-saw-wielding maniac.”
