BACK IN THE CAR WITHOUT HAVING LEARNED MUCH OF anything, I used my iPad to locate a nearby park on Cloverdale and took Lucy for a quick but chilly walk. It turns out that time spent dog walking is also good for thinking. Once Lucy was finished, I knew where we were going next—the King County Recorder’s Office in the courthouse on Fourth Avenue in downtown Seattle. The nearest parking garage with any availability was two blocks away at Second and Cherry. Walking there made me wonder how Alan was doing with his part of the operation.
Entering the fusty, marble-floored building that is the center of King County government felt very familiar. I had been there for countless courtroom proceedings, but this was my first time stopping by the Recorder’s Office. It was high noon when I stepped into the main waiting room. I expected a crowd at the front desk, but there wasn’t one. Evidently these days most people do their searches online rather than going straight to the horse’s mouth.
I spent a lot of years in the world of old-school bureaucracy. In those days it was always the poor newbie—the employee with the least amount of seniority and the least experience—who was left manning or womaning the front counter during the preferred lunch hour. I was prepared to deal with a certain amount of incompetence, but I knew that even a novice in the office would be more adept at searching out records than I was.
Nonetheless, I was a little taken aback to see that the young woman standing behind the counter sported a pink-and-purple Mohawk. I came of age when women in the workforce wore two-piece suits or dresses along with heels and hose. In those days wearing pants was strictly forbidden. In fact, back in the late sixties I’m not sure pantsuits had even been invented. This woman wore faded jeans topped by a T-shirt that said BITE ME! Her arms were alive with countless tattoos, and her ears sported at least seven studs each. She also wore a nose ring.
“May I help you?” she asked. An ID lanyard hanging around her neck identified her as Linda Collins. She might have looked scary as hell, but her greeting was cordial enough.
“My name is Beaumont,” I told her, “J. P. Beaumont.” I produced one of my business cards and handed it over. “I’m working for a client whose great-grandmother recently passed away, and I’m wondering if you could locate the deeds for several parcels of property.”
I was the one doing all the talking, but it wasn’t clear if the Tattooed Lady on the far side of the counter was listening to a word I said. Instead she stood there mutely staring down at my business card.
“J. P. Beaumont,” she murmured at last. “Didn’t you used to work for Seattle PD in homicide?”
That was unexpected. “Yes, I did,” I admitted.
“My grandpa used to talk about you all the time,” she replied. “He always said you were one of the best—that you solved more cases roaring drunk than most people could cold sober.”
Talk about a backhanded compliment.
“And your grandfather is?”
“Conrad Collins,” she answered, “but people at the department used to call him Corky.”
That was a name out of the past. Detective C. Collins and I had the shared idiosyncrasy of using our initials as opposed to our given names. At work I was usually called J.P., but for reasons I never quite fathomed, Detective Collins was dubbed Corky. In fact, I believe that day in the county Recorder’s Office was only the second time I’d ever heard the name Conrad. The first time had been at his retirement party. Corky was about ten years my senior, and the moniker had been well established before I ever came on the scene. In addition, the words “solving cases drunk” could have applied to him every bit as much as they did to me. Corky and I had knocked back more than a few adult beverages together back in our old Doghouse days.
“I’ll be damned,” I said. “How is Corky these days? Be sure to tell him I said hello.”
The expression on Linda’s face darkened. “I doubt it would do much good,” she said. “Gran had to put him in a memory-care facility up near where they live in Phinney Ridge. These days when she goes to see him, he usually thinks she’s his mother. I’ll tell Gran about meeting you, though. It’ll mean a lot to her that someone still remembers him. Now, what do you need?”
I opened my iPad to the Zillow page, told her what I was looking for, and passed the device across the counter to her. Looking down, she studied the screen while her fingers moved like lightning over her own keyboard.
“You need the current deeds?” she asked.
“And any previous ones.”
In less than five minutes’ time, Linda reached down and produced a stack of paper that had just shot out from a below-counter printer.
“Here you go,” she said with a smile, slipping the pages into a file folder, which she handed to me. “We usually charge for printouts, but today only I’m giving you the friends-and-family discount.”
“So what do I owe?” I asked.
“Not a thing,” she said. “Any friend of Gramps is a friend of mine.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very much.”
I took the file folder and left the office. Outside in the drafty lobby, I paused long enough to examine them. Currently the properties in question were held by Highline Development, purchased on October 1, 2016, from a seller named Lenora Elizabeth Harrison. The properties had all been quitclaimed over to Lenora by Agnes Mayfield on August 1 of the same year. At last Lenora No Last Name was nameless no longer—she had both a middle name and a last one as well.
Based on what Hilda Tanner had told me, that meant that the properties had come to Lenora from her mother for free shortly after she’d carted Agnes, the previous owner, off to an assisted-living facility of some kind. Had the quitclaim deeds been signed while Agnes was still in possession of her faculties or not? And what about that lowball purchase price subsequently paid by Highline Development?
Something about all this reminded me of the deal Lenora’s great-grandfather had struck with a developer just before the stock-market crash of 1929. Based on that, I now had a pretty good idea of who it was who had already spoken for that one not-yet-built but no-longer-for-sale McMansion. It seemed all too plausible that Lenora had unloaded her mother’s properties for a below-market price in exchange for having a ready-made house free for the taking.
And if Lenora was a cheat, what about the people at Highline Development? Had they known about Agnes Mayfield’s mental-health issues at the time the quitclaim documents were signed? They might not have, but Lenora sure as hell did. Those realizations led me to one simple conclusion: All of Lenora’s actions here pointed in the same direction—a deliberate attempt to swindle Petey Mayfield out of his rightful share of his grandmother’s estate.
I could have sat down with the iPad and used my copy of LexisNexis to find out exactly what I needed to know, but in this case I decided to press the Easy Button. Heading back to the parking garage and knowing today was Scotty’s day off, I dialed his cell.
“Hey, Pop,” he said when he came on the line. I like it that he calls me that. “Great minds. Want to come over later today? We can assemble the crib first and then go to dinner at Fishermen’s Terminal.”
“Sounds good,” I said, “but first I need some help.”
Yes, it’s illegal for cops to use police resources to obtain private information, but it happens all the time. Don’t ask me how I know.
“I need an address and anything else you may have on a woman named Lenora Elizabeth Harrison. I believe she lives somewhere on the Eastside.”
“I’m at home today, but I can get it for you.” Less than a minute later, as I walked into the parking garage, a text from Scotty came through, giving me an address on 12th Avenue NE in Medina, Washington.
Medina, just north of the city of Bellevue, is an incorporated entity in its own right. It’s small enough that it should probably be referred to as a “burbette” rather than a suburb, but since Medina is also the location of Bill Gates’s massive Lake Washington digs, housing there probably boasts the highest per-square-foot costs of anywhere in the state. And since Hilda Tanner had told me that Lenora Mayfield had hooked up with a Microsoft exec, it made sense that he’d be looking for a nesting spot in that exclusive enclave.
Back in the car, I fed the address into my GPS. From where I was in downtown Seattle, the fastest way to get to the Eastside was across Lake Washington on the Evergreen Floating Bridge on 520. Back in the good old days—I wish that phrase didn’t come to mind so often—the 520 Bridge was free. It was also crowded. Now the structure has been rebuilt and reconfigured in a way that added lanes, but it’s definitely not free. It’s also not nearly as crowded. I suspect overpriced tolls have something to do with that. Mel and I have decals on our respective windshields that register the toll every time we cross the bridge, but whenever we have to refill our so-called Good To Go! account, it makes me want to grind my teeth. Drivers around here pay all kinds of gasoline taxes that are supposed to cover the costs of road construction and maintenance. Unfortunately, state governments aren’t required to live within their means the way taxpayers have to.
Offended by learning about the extent of Lenora’s sneaky scheming, I left downtown in a state of relative agitation. By the time I drove across the lake with Lucy’s chin welded to my shoulder, I had calmed down. I’ve learned to keep a washcloth in the car. It functions a lot like Alan’s burp rag for Athena. It keeps dog drool from dribbling down the inside of my shoulder.
The GPS sent us off 520 at 84th, the first exit after the bridge. We drove past a golf course and turned right at the end of it. At 12th Avenue NE there were a couple of those newer stacked-box-looking houses that seem to be sprouting up like weeds everywhere, but when I finally located the address Scotty had given me, the house was totally invisible from the street. Concealed behind the barrier of a twelve-foot-high laurel hedge, there was no need for a No Trespassing sign, because the hedge was totally impenetrable. The only means of egress was through an imposing ten-foot-tall gate made of sheets of rusted corten steel. There was a post holding an intercom situated on the left side of the driveway. I pulled up next to that, buzzed down my car window, and pressed the call button.
“May I help you?” asked a disembodied voice.
“I’m here to see Lenora Harrison.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
“May I tell Mrs. Harrison your name and what this is about?”
“My name is J. P. Beaumont. I’m a private investigator looking into the disappearance of her nephew Peter, aka Petey, Mayfield.”
Lucy and I sat there for the next five or so minutes, cooling our jets. Then finally, without another word from the intercom, the heavy gate rolled open. What was on the other side was breathtaking, and about as far from Lenora’s humble beginnings in her parents’ West Seattle home as can be imagined. Before me was a sprawling mansion, painted pastel yellow with dazzling white trim and shutters. The columns lining the front porch made the house look downright palatial. The house was surrounded by a spread of immaculately manicured lawns punctuated with blossoming cherry trees and tall weeping cedars. The circular driveway was made of redbrick pavers and widened into a courtyard directly in front of the house. Off to one side stood a four-car garage. Parked nearby on this clear spring day were three recently washed and waxed vehicles—a white Tesla Model S, a black Porsche Carrera GT, and a bright red Ferrari California T with the top down. Talk about conspicuous consumption!
As I approached the house, one of the double front doors opened and a woman stepped out onto the porch. The first thing I noticed about Lenora Elizabeth Harrison was her flaming red hair. She was relatively tall and dressed in a long-sleeved, figure-hugging top worn over a pair of skintight designer jeans. The jeans came complete with a few of those ladderlike tears in both thighs that reveal the peekaboo flashes of bare flesh that are seemingly a high-fashion necessity these days.
I grew up dirt poor. If I ended up with a hole in the knees of my pants, my mother patched them. When the pants were no longer patchworthy—usually because I’d outgrown them and they were inches too short—they went into the trash. Seeing a rich babe wearing torn jeans and posing as poor is something that, like the toll on the 520 Bridge, makes me want to grind my teeth. And speaking of posing, she stood at the top of the steps leaning against a wooden column with her hands on her hips as if daring me to try coming inside. I remembered that particular stance from my old Fuller Brush–selling days. It meant, “Don’t even bother.”
“Okay,” I said to Lucy as I unbuckled my seat belt. “You might as well stay in the car. It doesn’t look as though the welcome mat is out.”
“Good afternoon,” I said, extending one of my cards as I approached the front porch.
“My name is Lenora Harrison, and you are?” she asked.
“As I told the person over the intercom, my name is J. P. Beaumont. I’m a private investigator looking into the disappearance of your nephew, Peter Mayfield.”
Lenora took the proffered card and studied it for some time. While she examined the card, I examined her. According to Hilda Tanner, Lenora’s younger brother had been born when Agnes was in her early forties. That would mean Agnes would have been in her late thirties or early forties when Lenora was born. Looking at the woman on the porch, it would have been easy to place Lenora Harrison somewhere in her fifties or maybe her early sixties. I had no doubt that “she’d had some work done” on her face, leaving behind one indelible giveaway—the vertical lines above her lips that told everyone who saw her that she’d once been a smoker.
At last, rather than keeping my business card, she simply handed it back to me. Not only was the message rude, it was also painfully clear. Whatever I was doing about Petey had nothing whatsoever to do with her, and she wasn’t the least bit interested.
“If my nephew’s gone missing, why is a private investigator looking for him rather than the police?”
“That’s actually why I’m here,” I explained. “In order to involve law enforcement, someone needs to file a missing-persons report. According to a neighbor, Hilda Tanner, you’re Petey’s nearest blood relation.”
“Hilda Tanner,” Lenora sniffed. “That old battle-ax? Why can’t she ever mind her own business? As for Petey? He’s just like his dad—never settled down, never had a decent job. How can he be missing from home when, as far as I know, once he left my mom’s house he’s never had a real home? As for my filing a missing-persons report? It’s not gonna happen, so why don’t you get back in your car, drive on out of here, and go back to wherever you came from?”
In other words, Here’s your hat, buddy, what’s your hurry? And don’t let the door slam you on the butt on your way out. Make that the gate rather than the door. And when it comes to the critical issue of making a good first impression? Lenora Harrison had flunked that test fair and square. She was the kind of woman that Mel might well refer to as a “ringtailed bitch.”
“Thanks for your help,” I told her. “You’ve got a lovely place here.”
“We like it,” she allowed.
That was what she told me, but I couldn’t help wondering. If this lavish and very upscale spot was Lenora’s home base right now, what the hell was she doing buying up a not-yet-built place in West Seattle? The McMansions at Mayfield Glen would be a big step up from the place across the street where Lenora had grown up, but compared to this? Moving to Suzanne Nishikawa’s West Seattle development would be a huge step down.
So what was the deal here? And what was my next move?
The imposing corten gate rolled open as I approached it from the inside. As it rumbled shut behind me, I had no idea where I was going to go or what I was going to do as a follow-up. Years of experience told me that missing-persons reports filed by nodding acquaintances are generally nonstarters. A report filed by me or by Alan Dale or even by Hilda Tanner would most likely produce a bored yawn followed by a raised-eyebrow question of, “What business is it of yours?”
There was certainly no love lost between Lenora Harrison or Hilda Tanner in either direction, but as I merged back onto I-5 from 520, I remembered something Hilda had said about an upcoming estate sale scheduled to take place at Agnes Mayfield’s former residence. And then there was that other thing Hilda had mentioned—about when Agnes was beginning to have dementia issues, Hilda and some of the other neighbors had taken turns looking in on the ailing woman. Did that mean there was a chance Hilda Tanner might still have a key that would let me inside Agnes’s abandoned house to have a look around? As a sworn police officer, I wouldn’t have been allowed to enter a residence and search for evidence without having enough probable cause to obtain a search warrant. But when I became a private eye, those constraints went right out the window.
Over time I’ve learned a lot about the workings of DNA. Mitochondrial DNA flows from mother to child. Having a DNA profile of Agnes Mayfield would help us build a familial DNA connection to her grandson, Petey. That might not help us if Petey was still alive and kicking, but what if he wasn’t? What if Petey was deceased and his unidentified remains were sitting unclaimed, filed away in the locked storage unit in some M.E.’s office? In that case a DNA profile from Agnes might be the key to discovering what had become of him.
By the time Lucy and I were traveling southbound on I-5, I had reached the conclusion that we were headed for West Seattle. As for Lucy? She was headed for West Seattle, too, but she clearly wasn’t happy about it. Rather than sitting with her chin resting on my shoulder, she was curled up and moping in the backseat, most likely missing her morning Frisbee chase.
Working as a private investigator might be fine for human beings, but for dogs? Not so much.