Ben was the first one to find her there. He grabbed her and hugged her and let her go. “That. Was. Amazing!” he gushed. “You really killed it, and I’m not just saying so because the bar receipts are probably going to be our highest all year, for a weeknight!”
“It’s okay, man. I know why you really love me—and it’s not for my vocal stylings.”
He beamed at her, and he put a friendly hand on her shoulder. “I’m entirely serious when I say that we should really work out some kind of contract. Even if I can’t pay you much, I ought to pay you something.”
“Or we can discuss how much I’d have to drink to keep you from feeling guilty.”
“One way or another, you’re getting compensation—but I’d rather it doesn’t come at the expense of your liver. Want to talk about a percentage of receipts?”
“Actually, that sounds… pretty fair.”
Just then, Niki slipped behind the curtain from the AV table where Matt was still packing up the equipment.
“That was a great set!” Niki hugged her hard and let her go in time for Grady to appear in the hallway—the teenage girl at his side. “Grady!” she called. “What’s up with the jailbait?”
“Oh my God, please don’t call her that.”
Niki laughed and went to give him a friendly smack on the shoulder. “All right, I won’t. What should I call her instead?”
The girl held out her hand and said, “I’m Molly.”
“Niki,” she replied. “And this is Leda.”
“Dad’s special travel agent,” Molly said knowingly.
Leda said, “It’s good to meet you, but I’m a little worried about anybody seeing you in the bar. How old are you?”
“Not old enough to even have a fake ID,” she said with a smirk. “Or a driver’s license,” she said more pointedly to her father.
“Yeah, well. Insurance for teenagers is expensive and you’re good at public transportation. Hey, speaking of which.” Grady gave his watch a meaningful tap, and reminded them all that this was a school night. He concluded, “We can’t be here too late.”
They cheerfully went their separate ways. But not until Leda had secured a Post-it note promising 5 percent of bar receipts, open to negotiation, and assurances that tomorrow she and Grady would go interview Kim Cowen.
“If only Tod could see me now,” she muttered as she wrapped her scarf tighter and headed to her car.
She’d like to think that he’d have been proud and excited for her. He would’ve brought fancy red roses to present to her at the end of the night, and she would’ve felt like a beauty queen, standing in the spotlight. He would have gone around the corner with her to the pizza place to decompress after all that public attention and performance. He would’ve driven home, so she could have another drink—liver be damned.
Or, then again.
If Tod had lived, and if they’d married, Leda might not have ever needed Castaways, the way she needed it now. Maybe this was her way of letting go of him, a piece at a time, and finding something new to… not to take his place, but to help spackle the hole he’d left in her life.
All the way home, she thought about how it felt strange but good—to be pushing for answers beyond the ones the cops had initially given her. The lack of closure had been such an empty ache in the center of her chest for so long, and her grief so insurmountable that it seemed like she’d never be able to take a deep breath without sobbing again.
But tonight she inhaled, pushing the air past the tightness, feeling around for the lump in her throat. It was there. The odds were fair that it always would be. But tonight it was smaller, and she did not sob, but smile.
19.
Kimberly Cowen worked downtown with an advertising firm, but she didn’t want to meet at her own office. She hadn’t held the job very long, and she wasn’t interested in answering any questions about why cops might want a word with her regarding a murder case, thank you very much. However, she’d agreed to show up at the big library on Fourth Avenue.
“Meet me after work, upstairs near the local history archives, and we’ll talk,” she’d told Grady Merritt on the phone.
Leda found it all a little fishy, but Grady shrugged it off.
“People get weird when you tell them that you’re in law enforcement and you want to talk. Everybody starts shuffling through their memories, trying to figure out if they’ve done anything wrong and wondering if they need a lawyer.”
Leda shut the passenger door of Grady’s car and leaned against it while he paid for parking. “But she already knows you, and she knows all about the case.”
“She knows a bit about the case. She doesn’t know more about it than we do, unless she’s the one who murdered everybody.” He started to walk uphill. “Come on, and be cool.”
“I’m getting better about being cool.”
“Are you?” Grady asked, his voice pitched a little too high.
Leda adjusted her purse, slinging it across her chest like a messenger bag. “Well, I’m working on it.”
“That’s more like it. Where’s your shadow?”
“Niki? She had a doctor’s appointment. It’s just you and me.”
They were about two blocks from the downtown library building, a flagship of King County’s commitment to reading and education, and also a flagship of modern architecture, or that was Leda’s guess. What other explanation could there be for a building that looked like someone had overinflated a glass Rubik’s Cube? She’d been led to believe it was a vast improvement over the previous library at the same location, which in turn had been a vast improvement over the old house that had initially gotten the library party started—considering that the house had burned to the ground.
Leda Foley had never actually been inside this particular library. She’d been to the Columbia City branch, as well as the one in Fremont, and one in Rainier Beach—usually because she needed free Wi-Fi before it became ubiquitous around town. But this was the granddaddy of them all—eleven geometrically styled stories of pure, weapons-grade knowledge.
Inside, the library looked like the interior of a UFO, if the aliens were super into reading: lots of grays and vivid greens, electric yellows, and illuminated escalators that disappeared up into the ceiling or down through the floor.
Leda said “Wow” as she trailed along behind Grady.
“It’s really something else, isn’t it?” He led her to a narrow, mirrored escalator, and she climbed on behind him.
“It sure is. You know where we’re going, right?”
“All the way to the top. Hope you don’t have vertigo.”
She stared at his back, on the steps ahead of her. “No, but what if I did?”
“Then you might want to wait this one out.”
On the top level, the sky was the limit. The world above was glass and metal, and the whole city loomed around them, but when Leda stepped toward a window to look outside, yes, maybe she did feel a touch of vertigo. It was something about how the building jutted out over the street. She shook her head and fell back in line behind Grady, who was making a beeline for a common area with tables, chairs, outlets, and a number of people sitting around on laptops and wearing headphones.