J. Jance - Betrayal of Trust

It was almost ten by then but not yet fully dark. We were on our way to the hotel. I was dead tired, but Mel had caught her second wind.

“Let’s go take a look at Ron Miller’s place before we call it a night,” Mel suggested.

She fed the Millers’ address into the GPS and off we went. By the time we reached North Cooper Point Road, it was full dark. Even so, it was possible to see that Ron Miller’s family lived in a home that made Sid Longmire’s place look like a slum and the governor’s mansion look modest. This wasn’t a gated community so much as a gated estate or a gated compound with several buildings looming into view. We drove past the driveway entrance slowly but without stopping.

Mel gave a whistle. “These people have moolah,” she observed. “So maybe showing up unannounced in the middle of the night to talk to their fair-haired boy isn’t such a good idea.”

I had visions of a Garvin McCarthy look-alike riding to the rescue before Mel and I had a chance to open our mouths.

“How about this?” I asked. “It’s been a long day. Let’s call it a job for tonight. Ron Miller may be tied in pretty tight with Janie’s House, but the place was closed all day today. If his conscience is bothering him, I’m willing to bet that he’ll show up there bright and early tomorrow, trying to get the lay of the land and figure out if the closure had anything to do with him. If he’s our guy, he’ll want to make sure his tracks are properly covered. I think Meribeth Duncan is far more likely to give us a crack at talking to Ron Miller than his parents will.”

“Agreed,” Mel said. “Time to head for the barn.”

Back at the hotel we stopped off at the coffee shop for a late supper. I had soup; Mel had salad. Once up in our room, I booted up my computer while Mel got first dibs on the bathroom. Hidden among all those penis enlargement spam messages was an e-mail from Todd Hatcher.

I checked on all the Web sites the person posing as Greg Alexander had visited. Surprise, surprise. Several of them feature snuff films. I think maybe we’re on to someone who is making and selling this crap. And there’s a new one-one that appears to feature the same girl and most likely isn’t faked. The strangulation was done barehanded and photographed with a stationary camera. If you can find the perpetrator, there should be defensive wounds on his hands and arms. I’m sending you a copy of the new clip. Warning: Don’t log on to the sites yourself. If you do, your spam folder will fill up with this junk within a matter of minutes.

I sent Todd a thank-you note and said that we’d be in touch tomorrow, which, it turned out, was very close to being today. There was an e-mail from my daughter, Kelly, with a photo of Kayla, my granddaughter, missing her right front tooth. That one rocked me because it didn’t seem possible that Kayla was already old enough to be losing her baby teeth.

Then, there at the bottom of the new-mail list lurked the one from Sally Mathers. I still didn’t know how to answer it, but I didn’t want her to think I was ignoring it, either.

Received your e-mail. Involved with a complicated investigation. I’ll get back to you when I can.

All of which was the truth, with only the smallest possible amount of varnish.

Mel emerged from the bathroom with nothing on and slipped into bed. I told her about the message from Todd.

“That squares with what the M.E. told us, too,” she said.

When she turned off her light, I got the message: Close the computer; step away from the chair; get in bed; turn out your light. I did all of the above.

Moments later I was snuggled up beside her in bed. I was drifting off to sleep when she awakened me with a snort of laughter.

“What’s so funny?” I grumbled.

“You are,” she said. “I can’t get over the idea that you thought it was strange that Ron Miller’s middle name came from an actual town. You don’t have any room to talk.”

“I didn’t say it was strange,” I corrected. “I said it was pretentious. And now that I’ve seen Ron Miller’s parents’ house, I’m not backing off on a single word of it. I’ll give Ron Miller the benefit of the doubt. He may not be pretentious, but his parents definitely are. ”

When Mel’s cell phone alarm went off the next morning, it was time for our complicated single-bathroom tango. I stayed in bed snoozing while she did what she needed to do. Then, once she headed out the door for the elevator, I hit the bathroom. It was ten to eight by then, so I had to step on it. When I came down to the restaurant five minutes later, Mel and Ralph were seated together at a small table, both of them looking like they’d just stepped out of a store window. Compared to the two of them, I looked like a much-rumpled bed.

This is nothing new. Ralph Ames has always been a suave kind of guy. When I first met him, he was Anne Corley’s attorney. After her death, he came my way as part of the deal right along with the money I inherited from her. Since then, he’s been the one who has kept that inheritance not only intact but also growing. I believe that he’s now close to having been my attorney longer than he was Anne’s. And next to my former partner Ron Peters, Ralph is also my best friend.

In other words, I like the guy, but there are times when I also resent the hell out of him. I find it particularly provoking that, no matter the circumstances, he always manages to look like perfection itself. Even though I was wearing clothing fresh from the dry cleaner’s plastic bag, I couldn’t compete with Ralph’s terminal dapperness. And there’s no explaining Mel’s ability to look great no matter what, either.

As a consequence I was feeling a bit grumpy when I joined them in the restaurant where they sat, heads ducked close together, studying something on the table in front of them. I took one of the two remaining empty chairs.

Once I was seated-next to Mel and across from Ralph-I could see they were examining three eight-by-ten photos that lay on the table. Ralph glanced up at me and then pushed the photos in my direction.

“To what do we owe. .?” I began, pulling out my reading glasses and sticking them on my nose. When I saw the subject matter of the photos, my question dwindled away into shocked silence.

The first picture was one I recognized right off. It was my senior portrait from the Shingle, the Ballard High School yearbook. In it I wore my first-ever store-bought suit, purchased on layaway at JCPenney’s. At first glance I thought the other two were pictures of me as well. Upon closer examination, however, I realized that although the young man in the photo certainly looked like me, he wasn’t me. I didn’t recognize either the pose or the clothing. The third picture was of the same guy, grinning my own familiar grin. He was obviously fresh from basic training and wearing a World War II-vintage U.S. Navy uniform.

Ralph tapped first that photo and then the other lightly with his finger. “Meet Hank Mencken, Beau,” he said. “I believe this gentleman was your father.”

For a time I could barely breathe. Yes, I’d had a hint in Sally’s e-mail that this was coming and that I might finally be able to put a name on my father’s identity, but nothing had prepared me for the shock of that moment when I saw his photo for the first time. The world seemed to shift on its axis as I stared into the face of a complete stranger and discovered that it was almost a mirror image of my own.

Just as I had taken one look at Zoe Longmire and known at once that Marsha Gray Longmire was her mother, the same thing was true here. As I looked into the eyes in that photograph and studied the set of the jaw and the distinctive shape of the nose, I knew beyond a shade of doubt that I had found my family tree-my heritage and lineage.