The second item was a getaway weekend for two at one of the top-­of-­the-­line B and B’s in Port Angeles. I’d overheard Cherisse talking to Scott about how much she’d love to go there for their wedding anniversary. It was part of the silent auction, so she had no way of knowing I had purchased it until that section of the auction closed and I handed the certificate over to her.

“Happy anniversary,” I said. “Just make sure he has the weekend off.”

As for the third item? That was an immense piece of multiple-­layered and thoroughly bubble-­wrapped Dale Chihuly glass resting in the trunk. It was bright red, one of Mel’s favorite colors. I had no idea where we’d put it—­in the condo or somewhere in the new house—­but it was ours now. And I bought it for the same reason I bought the Disney tickets—­I was bidding against the same guy.

Scott and Cherisse stopped in front of Belltown Terrace. Scott carried the piece of glass art into the building, and the night doorman put a BACK IN A MINUTE sign on his desk long enough to help me get it up to the unit. My phone was ringing as I let him back out the door.

“How’s the party?” Mel asked.

“I’m home,” I told her.

“Already?”

“It’s ten,” I said, “so not that early. But if it’s ten here, it’s one there. What are you doing up so late?”

“The clock may say it’s late. My body begs to disagree. I’m not the least bit sleepy. What did you buy?”

To my way of thinking, there should have been a full stop to allow for a new thought and a new paragraph. That’s not how Mel Soames works. She goes straight for the jugular.

“Some tickets to Disney,” I said.

“And?”

“A getaway weekend for Scott and Cherisse at a B and B over at Port Angeles.”

“And?”

I didn’t want to tell her about the very expensive red glass bowl. I said, “It’s for you, and I’m not telling you. It’s a surprise.”

“How much did it cost?”

“Same answer. Not telling.”

“Spoilsport. Did you call Ralph?”

That counted as another abrupt U-­turn in the conversation, with no advance warning. “I didn’t,” I said. “Not yet.”

It was also a sore spot. My friend and attorney, Ralph Ames, had helped start a privately funded and operated cold case organization called The Last Chance, a group that is patterned after the Vidocq Society. The guys who work TLC cases are retired law enforcement and forensics folks—­­people who were and are, unfortunately, all too much like me.

As soon as Ralph got wind that S.H.I.T. was a thing of the past, he was all over me, trying to get me to sign on. And every time he asked, I turned him down. My recent experience with a cold case hadn’t gone well. Yes, the case got solved—­decades too late—­but a very talented homicide cop, Delilah Ainsworth, died in the process.

Ralph had been on my case about TLC, and so had Mel. The Harry I. Ball Project was completed, and my next venture into construction—­the remodel of our newly purchased fixer-­upper in Bellingham—­was on hold. There was a major delay in the permitting process, which meant that everything was up in the air. Much as I despise being dragged around looking at appliances and designer plumbing and light fixtures, to say nothing of tile and backsplash materials, doing all those things was better than doing nothing. Because that was what I was up to right now, nothing, and it was driving me nuts.

I had come face-­to-­face with every retired cop’s worst nightmare. I had nothing—­not one thing—­to do. I don’t golf. I don’t bowl. I don’t play chess. I do, in fact, do crossword puzzles, but the older I get, the less time those take. Mel had told me on the way to the airport that she had learned, through Ralph’s wife, Mary, that his group was tackling a cold case in Portland.

“I don’t want to go to Portland to work a case,” I told her. “When you’re in Bellingham and I’m here, we’re already ninety minutes apart. Being in Portland would add three hours to that.”

The part I didn’t say aloud, although she probably suspected it all the same, was that I was still shaken by what had happened a ­couple of weeks earlier when Mel’s second-­in-­command, Austin Manson, had gone off the rails. The man had fully expected to be handed the police chief’s job, and when the city council and city manager had settled on Mel, the assistant chief had been beyond pissed. Seething with anger and fueled by too much alcohol, he had caught Mel unawares, knocked her out, trussed her up, and tossed her in the trunk of his vehicle. He had been within minutes of dropping her off a seaside cliff when I, with the help of a cooperative tour bus driver, had managed to come to her rescue.

All that had quieted down now, at least on the surface. The mayor of Bellingham, Adelina Kirkpatrick, had gone to bat for Manson, who happened to be the son of her best friend. As a result, no criminal charges had been brought against the guy. He had been quietly packed off to a rehab facility of some kind. Mel insisted she was over it; I was not. I had felt completely helpless that afternoon. I had known she was gone, and for a while it had seemed as though there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. It didn’t help that I have a recurring nightmare in which I endlessly open the trunk of Manson’s car. In the dream, sometimes Mel is there, bound in duct tape just as she had been that day. Other times, I see Delilah Ainsworth’s bloody body. And once, just once, the body in the trunk had been that of Anne Corley, my second wife, looking exactly the way she looked the day I shot her to death.

So Mel may have been “over it,” but I didn’t expect to be for some time. We’d been on the way to the airport when she asked me, “What’s wrong?”

I suspect that most married guys see that two-­word question for exactly what it is—­a minefield. I went for what I thought would be the least damaging answer. “Nothing,” I said.

“Don’t tell me that,” Mel said. “For the past few weeks you’ve been Mr. Growly Bear himself.”

“I’m bored,” I had said. But that wasn’t a safe-­harbor answer, either.

“What are you going to do about it?”

Which put the ball squarely back in my court. “I’ll call Ralph,” I had said, but I hadn’t carried through on that, and now Mel knew it, too.

“You say there’s a case in Portland?”

“That’s what Mary said.”

On the one hand, I was feeling like I’d been ambushed. On the other hand, I knew Mel was right to be worried. I recognized the dangers. The nightmares meant I wasn’t sleeping well. And sitting around with nothing to do other than enumerating my many sins of omission—­all the things I should have done and didn’t—­isn’t good for ­people like me. I’ve been off the sauce for years and haven’t had a slip, but that doesn’t mean I never will. I’m an alcoholic, after all. I may not be drinking, but I’m not cured.

“Jim Hunt is coming by tomorrow for a full day of furniture shopping. I’ll call Ralph when we’re done with that,” I said. “If not tomorrow, then Sunday for sure.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” I answered. For a change, I meant it.

CHAPTER 11

ONE DAY BIG MAN CALLED Ban—­Coyote—­to help him. You will remember, nawoj, my friend, that Coyote is often filled with the Spirit of Mischief. Big Man gave Coyote some beads. He told Coyote to go to Beautiful Girl, slip the beads on her wrist, and tell her about Big Man.

The next morning, Coyote went to the house where the brother and sister lived. Beautiful Girl was cooking. When Coyote tried to slip the beads on her wrist, it made her burn her hand. That made the girl very cross. She scolded Ban. She told him she wanted no beads and no husband, and she wanted no more bother with a coyote.