A perky receptionist answered. "Stanford-Davis Properties. How can I help you?"
"I'd like to talk to the agent who manages the Para-Wood condominiums, please."
"That's Mr. Foster, but he's not in today. However, I do know that the building is fully leased and no new leases are expected to come available before 2010."
"I'm not interested in leasing myself, but I am trying to discover who is leasing a specific unit in the building. This may pertain to a future criminal investigation." I let it be ugly.
She squeaked. "I… I just don't know. I'll have to have Mr. Foster call you back tomorrow."
"I need the information as soon as possible. Is there someone who can look up the file for Mr. Foster? His secretary? I could come to the office for the information."
"Oh no. That won't be necessary. Give me your name, phone number, and the unit number, and I'll have Mr. Foster's secretary call you."
"All right." I gave her the information and she assured me she would have the secretary return my call before close of business. The surfeit of butt kissing was discomfiting.
Secretaries know everything and run everything, but they are often clueless about the import of what they do. They are also great sources of information, if you can get one to talk. I hoped Mr. Foster's secretary would be a talker, but I wasn't expecting it. I stood and stretched and left my office to get a large cup of coffee.
When I returned, I set down my coffee and called my landlord. He wanted to argue about the cost of the new locks. I told him he was being a skinflint. He'd never heard the term before. We were in mutual mid-harangue when the call-waiting beep interrupted. I switched calls.
"Harper Blaine."
"Hey, it's Steve. From Dominic's. Remember me? Couple of nights ago you were looking for a blond kid? Well, I think I saw him last night."
"Hang on a second, Steve, I've got a call on the other line. Be right back." I popped over to my landlord. "Look, the lock was broken and I couldn't go off and leave my office unlocked, so bill me. OK?"
He muttered, but I ignored him. I was afraid Steve would have hung up, but he was still on the line when I toggled back to him.
"Thanks for waiting, Steve."
"No problem. So, that kid you were looking for? I think—no, I'm sure—I saw him last night."
"Where?"
"Outside the club."
"Why were you at the club on a Sunday?"
"Moving stuff around, just helping out. It was just getting dark when we knocked off. So I went out into the alley to throw some garbage in the Dumpster. And I see somebody out there. So I look around and then I see him kind of way in the back, in the dark."
"How did you recognize him? Did you get a good look?"
"Pretty good, yeah. You know that feeling you get when somebody's staring at you? Well, I got it, and I turned and there he was. So I stared back at him."
"Why?"
"Usually works. Sometimes we get junkies hanging around the alley and if you just stare hard, right at 'em, they go away. Or they jump you. But either way, it's something. So I stared at him and he took a step toward me. Then he just kind of faded back into the alley and ran away."
"You're sure it was him?"
"Or some other cupid-faced kid with yard-long blond hair, yeah."
"About what time?"
"About… seven thirty, eight o'clock."
"Why didn't you call me right away?"
"Didn't have your card with me."
It was more than I'd known an hour earlier. "Thanks. By the way, I was told he might have gotten tangled up with a guy called Edward who hangs around the clubs. Sounds like an aging Goth, from the description. Ring any bells?"
"Uh… no. Can't come up with any matches from that description. Sorry I can't give you any more."
"What you've given me is great. Oh, hey, how'd he look?"
"Look? The kid? Not good. Kinda gave me the willies, you want the truth."
That raised my eyebrows. "I do. Thanks again, Steve. There's ever anything I can do… that's legal…."
"Round about midnight on a Tuesday I could really use a triple skinny."
I laughed. "I'll remember that."
I hung up the phone and sat for a minute. My guesses had been good: Cameron Shadley was in the Pioneer Square district and something was wrong. Now I just had to bring us together. That might be hard.
Someone had told me once that the Pioneer Square historic district completely covered the original downtown of the early 1880s— small by modern standards, but still a city within the modern city, stretching from the new baseball stadium to the Cherry Street bend and from the waterfront to the train stations flanking Seventh Avenue. About fifty square blocks, and every inch of it crammed full of nooks and niches, basements and alleys. You'd need two hundred cops sweeping through with elbows linked to stand a decent chance of flushing one individual. Luck and shoe leather wouldn't be enough; I needed something specific to catch Cameron. But my brain resisted working. I sighed and put the problem on my mental back burner, trusting my subconscious to boil up an idea.
While that cooked, I'd concentrate on Sergeyev's missing parlor organ. I returned Ann Ingstrom's call.
Mrs. Ingstrom sounded stronger and more confident than she had on Saturday. "You know, it seems we got rid of the wretched thing more recently than I thought. It was 1990."
"Who bought it?"
"A man named Philip Stakis. It's not someone I know, so there's not much else I can tell you. Let me give you his phone number."
She rattled off the number and I wrote it down. "Thanks, Mrs. Ingstrom. Could I get a copy of the receipt from you, just to be thorough?"
"Oh, certainly. Should I mail it to you?"
"I'd rather come pick it up, if that's OK."
"Oh, fine! Today? When would you like to come?" She sounded as if she were inviting me for tea.
I glanced at my watch. It was just about one o'clock. I doubted I'd hear from Stanford-Davis before four. "I could be there by two, if that's all right."
"That will be just fine." She gave me her address and directions. I had just enough time to grab a bite to eat. I snatched up my stuff and locked up, then went out for food and lots more coffee.
The amount of coffee may have been a mistake because, while it helped perk me up, I was nearly cross-eyed with the need to find a restroom by the time I got to the Ingstrom house in north Ballard.
It was a pleasant Victorian, the kind in which families raised generations. Mrs. Ingstrom answered the door herself at my knock. She asked me in and I requested the use of her bathroom.
"Oh, the one down here is a mess. Go to the top of the stairs and turn right. It's at the end of the hall. Watch out for all the boxes and don't mind the cat, he likes to sleep on the heat register there," she explained.
I shot up the stairs past a row of packing boxes and into the large bathroom, where I was greeted by the beady glare of a single yellow eye.
" 'Scuse me," I said to the three-foot mound of white fur. It huffed and tucked away its eye for a few more winks of catnap.
The bathroom was clean and depersonalized. Only a small bottle of aspirin and a cardboard box of adhesive bandages still sat in the open medicine cabinet. Rust marks on the metal shelves showed where other things had been not long ago. The room was silent on the matter of the lives which had passed through it.
I was leaving when the cat rose like a thunderhead and stretched with a head-splitting pink yawn. I looked back toward it as, with no apparent acceleration, the cat sailed out of the room past me, waving its plume of a tail. A cat-shaped shadow, fluttering Grey, remained lurking on the heat register. I shook myself and went back down-stairs.