“That you, Birdie?” Grandpa Hugo asked as the screen door slammed behind me.
Shells and rocks ground beneath my shoes as I made my way across the tiny beach to a pair of wooden Adirondack chairs. He sat there, watching the sunrise, as he frequently did. “The one and only,” I said, taking his outstretched hand as he reached back and guided me around to the empty chair next to him. Below his wire-rim glasses, his smile was sincere, and his cheeks were rosy.
“You managed to avoid murder on the ferry,” he said cheerfully.
“Both my own and others.”
He was dressed as he always was: crisp white button-down shirt and pressed slacks held up by black suspenders, which he wore because a belt irritated his metal hip after the boating injury that sent him into early retirement from the Coast Guard—and made him dependent upon mild opiates and the footed walking cane that stood in the stand near his chair.
Despite the bum hip, he was healthy and sharp, and he looked good for his age—especially for someone who slept only a few hours at night. Before Grandpa’s accident, I assumed his work schedule caused him to be sleepy, because he often worked at night, shutting down offshore smuggling operations around the Sound. After the accident, when he was officially diagnosed with narcolepsy, he said he was too old to change his ways and that the medicine his doctor wanted him to take made him feel weird.
If I had to profile Grandpa Hugo, it would look like this:
Suspect: Hugo Lindberg
Age: 59
Occupation: Former criminal investigator, US Coast Guard, base Seattle
Medical conditions: (1) Narcolepsy. (2) Metal hip and pins in left leg. (3) Nearsighted; wears glasses. (4) Comically afraid of big spiders.
Personality traits: Kind. Excellent with details. Good observer.
Background: Born on Bainbridge Island. Parents were Swedish immigrants. Married Eleanor May Gladstone in 1979. Loves paperback thrillers, model ships, and fishing. Has one close friend. Regrets kicking his pregnant teenage daughter out of the house after a major fight, which kept him and his wife estranged from his granddaughter for ten years. Never quite got over his daughter’s untimely death.
“I texted you twice to let you know I was safe,” I told him. Once while I was holed up in the hotel bathroom after work and again when I’d safely made it onto the ferry.
“And I got them. Much appreciated, Birdie.”
“You made me breakfast?”
Orange juice, a carafe of hot tea, muesli cereal, and yogurt. All of it was artfully arranged on an old wooden cable-spool table between us.
“It was exhausting,” he teased. “I could barely get the cereal box open. Scoot your cup over and let me pour you some bergamot tea. Tell me all about your first night. Did you stumble upon any cases that needed solving?”
Grandpa is nuts about mystery novels and noirs too. He tried to get my mom interested in whodunits when she was my age, but the whole teenage pregnancy thing drove a wedge between them. After she died, when I moved in with my grandparents here, I inherited some of her old mystery books. Which made Grandpa happy. I think he was just so relieved to find a shared interest with ten-year-old me, a virtual stranger with whom he’d spent little time. Mom had just died, and being able to read and talk about death, bodies, and murder in a way that was removed and clinical was strangely comforting. Maybe for both of us.
And now that Grandma was gone, our love of mystery continued to be common ground. We had an ongoing friendly competition to identify potential unsolved mysteries around the island. Petty theft. Disappearances. Affairs. Why Mrs. Taylor moved her car out of her driveway in the middle of the night. You’d be surprised what you can learn about your neighbors when you stay up late.
“What about that old Hollywood starlet’s murder? Tippie Talbot. Any hotel secrets about her?”
“The room she died in was converted into a big suite with the room next door. Completely renovated. Doubt there’s anything to find now.”
“That’s unfortunate. What else?”
“There’s a mysterious sewage leak in the hotel garage,” I informed him as heavenly steam rose from my mug. “According to the building plans, there isn’t a sewage pipe down there. It’s coming from an area of the garage that they can’t access, and it would cost too much money to investigate fully, because they’d have to close the garage and tear out ceilings and walls. So they keep blindly spraying some sort of industrial-strength liquid rubber until the leak temporarily stops. Apparently, they’ve done this twice before.”
The wind fluttered his dark gray hair. “Sounds unsanitary.”
“I caught a whiff of it from the lobby a couple of times,” I said, grimacing and shaking my head. “Anyway, that’s all I got. Not an interesting case.”
“No, it’s not.” He squinted at the orange sun peeking out from trails of gray clouds covering the sky. “You need a proper summer mystery. One involving a big downtown corporation and a missing briefcase of money.”
“An animal rights group has been protesting our goldfish rental program, but I don’t think that’s much of a conundrum.” I took a sip of hot tea, strong and floral, trying to think of anything else that might be intriguing. “Daniel said cars have been stolen from the hotel garage and taken on joyrides.’ ”
“Who’s Daniel?”
I hesitated. “Just some guy I work with. The hotel van driver.”
“Interesting.”
“What is?”
“Nothing. It’s funny what you can tell about someone’s thoughts when you pay attention. The way their voice changes. The way they avoid your eyes.”
“I’m not avoiding your eyes.” I was. “He’s just a boy. It’s complicated. I don’t want to talk about it.”
I shouldn’t have mentioned him. I’m not even sure why I did. If Grandpa knew what I did . . . His mind and spirit were far more rational and modern than Grandma’s had been, but he’d still be disappointed. And—worse—he’d question my ability to make good decisions for myself. What if Daniel had been a bad person? Ted Bundy was charming, after all. What if I’d ended up dead in a ditch or stuffed into someone’s refrigerator? It’s not as if I hadn’t thought those things myself. But if Grandpa thought them, he would make me quit the hotel job. Talking him into the idea of me working the graveyard shift in the city wasn’t easy—Aunt Mona had to get involved, reminding him that I grew up in that neighborhood and that the walk from the hotel to the pedestrian bridge to the ferry terminal was only two blocks on a busy, well-lit, well-patrolled street. But he’d finally caved because he trusted my judgment. He had faith that I’d be mindful of my surroundings, that I’d be cautious—that I wouldn’t be lured into a proverbial ice cream truck by a stranger with a fruity rainbow pop.
I was supposed to be smarter than that.
What neither of us took into account was the rush of excitement that came with my newfound freedom. Or my rabid curiosity. Or Daniel’s infectious smile.
“Well, I’m sure Mona will get an earful about this Daniel boy. Lord knows you could never talk to your grandmother about these things when she was alive,” Grandpa said, wistful.
“Too late now,” I said bluntly. “She’s gone.”