For a moment or two I considered putting in a call to Seattle PD and seeing if I could worm any information out of some of my old compatriots. I thought better of it, though. It would be more useful for me to do some of my own investigating. To that end I located an address and a phone number for E. M. Tompkins on Church Street and stuffed it in my pocket. If I had time after I finished helping Lars, I’d stop by and pay a call LaShawn’s grieving mother.
I found Lars hobbling back and forth in front of Queen Anne Gardens’s sliding glass door. He looked agitated. I assumed he was still upset about Beverly. He was, but that wasn’t the only problem.
He climbed in beside me. “Those old ladies,” he muttered, slamming the car door behind him and shaking his head.
“What old ladies?” I asked.
“Back there,” he said, gesturing back toward Queen Anne Gardens. “Beverly’s not even in the ground and here they were all over me at breakfast, wanting to sit with me and bring me coffee. Ja, sure, they was treating me like I was…fresh fish.”
It was hard not to smile. It occurred to me that since Lars was in his nineties, he had a hell of a lot of nerve calling anyone else “old.” And only a lifelong fisherman would confuse “fresh meat” with “fresh fish” in that particular context. The very idea of Lars suddenly cast in the role of a sought-after and eligible bachelor was one that was difficult to grasp.
“They were probably just concerned about you,” I said.
“No,” he declared heatedly. “I’m old enough to know better than that!”
I had to give him that one. If he thought the randy ladies at Queen Anne Gardens were on the make, he was probably right.
“Where to?” I asked.
“Bleitz,” he muttered.
I knew where that particular funeral home was with no need of additional directions. It was where services had been held for Ron Peters’s estranged first wife back in January. We went up and over Queen Anne Hill and down the back side to Florentia near the Fremont Bridge.
Dana Howell, Lars’s funeral consultant, greeted him warmly. “I’m so sorry to be seeing you again so soon,” she said.
Lars nodded. “Ja, sure,” he said, “but I’m glad we got it done.”
And it turned out it was done. All of it, down to what would be printed on the program as well as what music would be sung and played. Beverly had already been brought to the mortuary from Queen Anne Gardens. There was an opening for a service at noontime on Thursday, if that was appropriate, and Lars allowed as how it was.
“You still want two urns?” Dana asked.
Lars shot me a sidelong glance and then nodded. “Half her ashes go into the lake with her first husband. The other half goes with me. That’s fair.”
That was the first I knew that when the weather cleared, I’d be required to make another pilgrimage to Lake Chelan to scatter a second set of ashes. This time I hoped I’d have brains enough to wear the sea-sick bracelets Beverly had given me. That way I wouldn’t turn green the first time The Lady of the Lake hit rough water.
“My arrangements are here, too,” he added in an aside to me while nodding in Dana’s direction. “Dana here knows yust what I want, and it’s paid for, too. You won’t have to worry about a t’ing.”
After leaving the funeral home we stopped by a florist on top of Queen Anne Hill where Lars blew all of seventy-five bucks on a floral arrangement and then worried about having spent too much. I made a note to call back later and add a few more arrangements to the floral end of things. Beverly Piedmont Jenssen’s memory certainly deserved much more than a single bouquet with a less-than-a-hundred-dollars price tag.
“Anything else?” I asked him, once we were back in the car.
Lars hesitated for a moment, then he nodded. “I t’ink I’d like to find a meeting.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear that, even after years of sobriety, Lars might be thinking about falling off the wagon. If your lifelong coping mechanism for dealing with grief is to numb the hurt with booze, than it’s easy to want to drift back into bad old habits. I made a few calls and located a noontime AA meeting at the back of an old-fashioned diner up on Greenwood. When it came time to repeat the Serenity Prayer, I saw the white-knuckled grip Lars had on his cane and knew right then he was having a hell of a struggle accepting what he couldn’t change. I was in pretty much the same boat.
When I took him back to Queen Anne Gardens, I went around to the passenger side of the car to let him out. Once he was upright, he surprised me by giving me a heartfelt hug. “T’anks,” he said. “T’anks for everything.”
“The kids will all be here tomorrow,” I told him. “Kelly and Jeremy are driving up from Ashland in the morning. They’ll be here in time for dinner tomorrow night, and Scott and Cherisse will be flying in about the same time. But what about tonight? Would you like to have dinner with Mel and me?”
Lars shook his head sadly. “No,” he said. “I’ll be all right.” With that, he hobbled away.
I glanced at my watch. It was only a little past one. Mel wouldn’t be back on this side of the water anytime before six. That meant I had several relatively free hours. I suppose I should have felt guilty about using that time to pursue the LaShawn Tompkins homicide, but I didn’t. After all, Beverly had been proud of the job I do. I thought she would have gotten a kick out of having a one-time-only chance to be part of what was close to an undercover operation.
With that in mind I got back into the S55 and headed for Rainier Valley. When I arrived at the Tompkins place on South Church Street, I looked around for any official-looking cars. Other than a battered eight-passenger van with the words king street mission lettered on the door, I didn’t see any. As far as police presence was concerned, I was it.
Etta Mae Tompkins’s house was small but tidy-looking, with a well-kept fenced front yard. A few traces of the earlier tragedy were still visible. A scrap of yellow police tape lingered on a gatepost. When I stepped onto the porch, I could see that someone had gone to the effort of trying to scrub the fingerprint dust off the door frame, but a practiced eye could still see grubby gray traces marring the otherwise white trim around the doorbell. A mop and bucket filled with dingy reddish water reeking of Pine-Sol sat next to the doorway. The screen door was closed, but the inside door stood slightly ajar. As I raised my finger toward the bell, I heard the sound of a female voice coming from inside.
“I know he was important to you and your people, Pastor Mark, and you’re welcome to have whatever kind of memorial service for Shawny you like,” the woman was saying. “And if I can get a ride, you can bet I’ll be there. But the funeral is mine, and that’s final. It don’t matter what LaShawn would or wouldn’t have wanted, neither. He’s dead, you understand me? LaShawn is dead and gone and he gets no say in the matter. Oh, you’re right. King Street Mission was his place and all, but it’s not my place. Funerals is for the living. Bible Baptist is my church, with my pastor and my people. That’s where I’m having it, and that’s final!”
A man spoke then. I couldn’t make out the individual words, but his tone sounded conciliatory.
Just then a second white van pulled up outside the little house’s front gate and parked just behind the first. A magnetic sign affixed to the van’s door announced: meals-on-wheels. A tall black man with a bald head and amazingly wide shoulders stepped out. Then he reached back inside and lifted a small cooler out of the backseat. Excusing himself, he shouldered past me on the front porch, pulled open the screen door, and stepped inside.
“It’s me, Etta Mae,” he called. “Mr. Dawson with Meals-on-Wheels. I’m here with your food.”
“Come on in, Mr. Dawson,” she replied. “You know the way. Janie, Mr. Dawson’s here from Meals-on-Wheels. Could you help him put it away?”