we were sitting looking out at an expanse of water, it would be easy to think that’s the water I meant when I spoke to Mel, but it wasn’t. In Seattle, that term refers to several different bodies of water, depending on where you are at the time and where you’re going. In this case we were looking at Elliott Bay, which happens to be our water view, but we work on the other side of Lake Washington, in this instance, the “traffic” water in question. People who live on Lake Washington or on Lake Sammamish would have an entirely different take on the matter when they used the same two words. Context is everything.
“Okeydokey,” Mel said, hopping off the window seat. “Another refill?” she asked.
I gave her my coffee mug. She took it, went to the kitchen, filled it, and came back. She handed me the cup and gave me a quick kiss in the process. “I started a new pot for our travelers,” she said, then added, “Back in a flash.”
I had showered and dressed while she was out, not that I needed to. There are two full baths as well as a powder room in our unit. When I married Mel, rather than share mine, she took over the guest bath and made it her own, complete with all the mysterious vials of makeup and moisturizers she deems necessary to keep herself presentable. I happen to think Mel is more than presentable without any of that stuff, but I’ve gathered enough wisdom over the years to realize that my opinion on some subjects is neither requested nor appreciated.
So we split the bathrooms. As long as we share the bed in my room, I don’t have a problem with that. Occasionally I find myself wondering about my first marriage to Karen, who is now deceased. Most of the time we were married, we had two bathrooms—one for us and one for the kids. Would our lives have been smoother if Karen and I had been able to have separate bathrooms as well?
No, wait. Denial is a wonderful thing, and I’m going to call myself on it. Despite my pretense to the contrary, the warfare that occurred in Karen’s and my bathroom usually had nothing to do with the bathroom itself. Karen was a drama queen and I was a jerk, for starters. Yes, we did battle over changing the toilet paper rolls and leaving the toilet seat up and hanging panty hose on the shower curtain rod and leaving clots of toothpaste in the single sink, but those were merely symptoms of what was really wrong with our marriage—namely, my drinking and my working too much. All the squabbling in our bathroom—the only real private place in the house—was generally about those underlying issues rather than the ones we claimed we were fighting about.
For years, Karen and I never showed up at the kitchen table for breakfast without having spent the better part of an hour railing at each other first. I’m sure those constant verbal battles were very hard on our kids, and I regret them to this day. But I have to tell you that the pleasant calmness that prevails in my life with Mel Soames is nothing short of a dream come true.
Don’t let the different last names fool you. Mel is my third wife. She didn’t take my name, and I didn’t take hers. As for the single day Anne Corley’s and my marriage lasted? She didn’t take my name, either, so I’m two for one in the wives-keeping-their-own-names department. Karen evidently didn’t mind changing names at all—she took mine, and later, when she married Dave Livingston, her second husband, she took his name as well. So much for the high and low points of J. P. Beaumont’s checkered romantic past.
When the coffeepot—an engineering marvel straight out of Starbucks—beeped quietly to let me know it was done, I went out to the kitchen and poured most of the pot into our two hefty stainless-steel traveling mugs. This is Seattle. We don’t go anywhere or do anything without sufficient amounts of coffee plugged into the system.
I was just tightening the lid on the second one when Mel appeared in the doorway looking blond and wonderful. Maybe the makeup did make a tiny bit of difference, but I can tell you she’s a whole lot better-looking than any other homicide cop I ever met.
On our commute, she drives. Fast. It’s best for all concerned if I settle back in the passenger seat of my Mercedes S-550, drink my coffee, and do my best to refrain from backseat driving. One of these days Mel is going to get a hefty speeding ticket that she won’t be able to talk her way out of. When that happens, I expect it will finally slow her down. Until that time, however, I’m staying out of it.
And don’t let all this talk about making coffee fool you. Mel is no wizard in the kitchen, and neither am I. We mostly survive on takeout or by going out to eat. We have several preferred restaurants on our list of morning dining establishments once we get through the potential bottleneck that is the I-90 Bridge.
The people who planned the bridges in Seattle—both the 520 and the I-90—were betting that the traffic patterns of the fifties and sixties would prevail—that people would drive into the city from the suburbs in the mornings and back home at night. So the lanes that were built into the I-90 bridges have express lanes that are westbound in the morning and eastbound in the afternoon. Except there are almost as many people working in the burbs now as there are in the city, and “wrong-way” commuters like Mel and me, on our way to the east side of Lake Washington to the offices of the Attorney General’s Special Homicide Investigation Team, pay the commuting price for those long-ago decisions every day.
If we make it through in good order, we can go to the Pancake Corral in Bellevue or to Li’l Jon’s in Eastgate for a decent sit-down breakfast. Otherwise we’re stuck with Egg McMuffins at our desks. You don’t have to guess which of those options I prefer. So we head out a good hour and fifteen minutes earlier than we would need to without stopping for breakfast. Getting across the lake early usually makes for lighter traffic—unless there’s an accident. Then all bets are off. A successful outcome is also impacted by weather—too much rain or wind or even too much sun can all prove hazardous to the morning commute.
That Monday morning we were golden—no accidents, no stop-and-go traffic. By the time the sun came peeking up over the Cascades in the distance, we were tucked into a cozy booth in Li’l Jon’s ordering breakfast. And more coffee. Because our office is across the freeway and only about six blocks away from the restaurant, we were able to take our time. Mel had pancakes. She’s a runner. She can afford the carbs. I had a single egg over easy with one slice of whole-wheat toast.
We arrived at the Special Homicide Investigation Team’s east side office at five minutes to nine. We don’t have to punch a time clock. When we’re on a case, we sometimes work extraordinarily long hours. When we’re not on a case, we work on the honor system.
For the record, I do know that the unfortunate acronym for Special Homicide Investigation Team is S.H.I.T., an oversight some bumbling bureaucrat didn’t understand until it was too late to do anything about it. In the world of state government—and probably in the federal government as well—once the stationery is printed, no departmental name is going to get changed because the resulting acronym turns out to be bad news. S.L.U.T. (the South Lake Union Transit) is another unfortunate local case in point.
But for all of us who actually work for Special Homicide, the jokes about S.H.I.T. are almost as tired as any little-kid knock-knock joke that comes to mind, and they’re equally unwelcome. Yes, we laugh courteously when people think they’re really clever by mentioning that we “work for S.H.I.T.,” but I can assure you, what we do here at Special Homicide is not a joke. And neither is our boss, Harry Ignatius Ball—Harry I. Ball, as those of us who know and love him like to call him.
Special Homicide is actually divided into three units. Squad A works out of the state capital down in Olympia. They handle everything from Olympia south to the Oregon border. Squad B, our unit, is in Bellevue, but we work everything from Tacoma north to the Canadian border, while Squad C, based in Spokane, covers most things on the far side of the mountains. These divisions aren’t chiseled in granite. We work for Ross Connors. As the Washington State Attorney General, he is the state’s chief law enforcement officer. We work at his pleasure and direction. We work where Ross Connors says and when Ross Connors says. He’s a tough boss but a good one. When things go haywire, as they sometimes do, he isn’t the kind of guy who leaves his people blowing in the wind. That sort of loyalty inspires loyalty, and Ross gives as good as he gets.
That morning Mel and I both managed to survive the terminal boredom of the weekly