“How’s your room?” Mel asked.
“The room’s fine,” I said, “but this chair? Not so much. And since this is supposedly a double room, shouldn’t they have at least two decent chairs?”
“Quit your bitching,” Mel advised, “and tell me about your day.”
So I did. She was especially interested in my long conversation with Danitza Miller. “To launch off on her own while pregnant at age sixteen and be able to put herself through school, she must be one tough cookie,” Mel observed. “Most of the girls I knew growing up would have swallowed their pride and gone crying to their parents for help, and I’d like to think that most of those parents would have been more than willing to do so.”
“Only if said parents were somewhat more open-minded than Roger Adams,” I observed. “Once Danitza left his household, her father effectively banished her. At some point after Danitza moved out of the home, her mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer. A year and a half later, when Eileen was dying, Nitz tried to visit her, but her father had left orders with the hospital staff saying she wasn’t welcome. And later, when it came time for Eileen’s funeral, Roger banned Nitz from that as well. He was in the state legislature at the time and claimed that his daughter was disturbed and dangerous. When she turned up at the church, an off-duty Alaska State Trooper was stationed at the door to prevent her from entering.”
“That takes the cake,” Mel declared. “Have father and daughter ever reconciled?”
“Not so far, and not just over the funeral situation either,” I told her. “There’s an issue with Roger’s second wife, Shelley. Penny Olmstead is the maternal aunt in Anchorage who took Danitza in after she left home. Penny is only eight years older than Nitz, so the two of them were more like sisters than auntie and niece.
“It turns out that before Shelley hooked up with Roger Adams, she was married to one of Roger’s best friends, a guy named Jack Loveday. Shelley and Penny went through school together. Penny was newly married and living in Anchorage when she went to a friend’s baby shower at some fancy Anchorage hotel. While there, she spotted Roger and Shelley being all lovey-dovey in the hotel restaurant, even though they were both still married to other people at the time. Penny spotted the lovebirds, but they didn’t see her. Shelley’s husband, Jack Loveday, was already a goner by the time Eileen Adams passed away. Shelley and Roger tied the knot three and a half months after Danitza’s mother’s death.”
“Did Danitza know about the affair?” Mel asked.
“Not until after their hurry-up wedding,” I answered. “That’s when Aunt Penny finally broke down and ratted them out to Nitz.”
“So Roger was pissed off about his daughter getting knocked up, even though at the same time he himself was carrying on a long-term affair?”
“Yup,” I said. “That’s the way it was.”
“What a hypocrite!” Mel exclaimed.
“Indeed,” I agreed, “although after all these years he might have decided to bury the hatchet.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Nitz mentioned that her father has handed off his law practice to a partner and is currently dealing with some kind of serious health issue. A couple of weeks ago, his longtime secretary reached out to Danitza, letting her know that he’s in pretty rough shape and hinting that maybe she should go see him.”
“I wouldn’t if I were her,” Mel declared, “not on a bet.”
“I doubt Danitza will either. At least it didn’t sound like it.”
“So what’s your next step?” Mel asked.
“Tomorrow I’ll be checking out some of Chris’s classmates from high school, the ones living in Anchorage. After that I plan to head for Homer.”
“Have you bothered looking at a weather report?” Mel asked.
“No, why?”
Glancing out the window, I could see a thick cloud of swirling snowflakes dancing in the glow of now-invisible streetlights several stories below. The flurries I’d seen earlier had become much more serious while I wasn’t looking.
“Because I just did,” Mel answered. “It looks like Anchorage is in for a hell of a snowstorm tonight—probably more than we had here. How far is Homer from where you are?”
“Four and a half hours,” I answered, “but my rental has four-wheel drive. I should be good.”
“Should be,” Mel repeated, “but the questions is, will you? I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but you’re a seventy-four-year-old man with two fake knees. I don’t like the idea of you driving around by yourself on unfamiliar roads and in questionable weather conditions. If you happen to run off the road into a ditch, you’re not in any condition to dig yourself out, and I don’t want you standing around in the cold waiting for a tow truck to show up either. Hire a driver.”