Free Long Time Gone by J. A. Jance

more reassuring than I felt. “No doubt your father has some perfectly reasonable explanation for where he went and what he was doing so late on Friday evening.”
    Tracy looked at me pleadingly. “Do you really think so, Uncle Beau?” she asked. “Or are you just saying that to make me feel better?”
    For an instant a terrible thought crossed my mind. Was Tracy as innocent as she seemed, or was her trip to see me a preemptive strike designed to point suspicion in her father’s direction and away from her? The thought was there, but looking into her guileless blue eyes, I banished it as quickly as it came.
    “Would you believe a little of both?” I asked.
    She gave me a faint smile. “I’d believe it,” she said. Unfolding her legs, Tracy reached for her jacket. “I’d better be going,” she said.
    I glanced outside. Far below, streetlights and headlights glowed in golden halos through the falling snow. I looked down at the stoplight at First and Broad. While I watched, a vehicle stopped on the steep incline west of First began to slip backward. The first vehicle slid until it bashed into a second one that had been coming up the street behind it. The second car spun like a slow-motion top before ending up sitting astraddle the opposite lane. Just then a westbound car came through the green light. The driver slammed on his brakes and then skidded down the hill until he T-boned the passenger side of the second vehicle.
    There’s nothing like Seattle in the snow. It can be an incredibly entertaining spectator sport as long as you’re not out in it.
    “No,” I declared, turning away from the window. “You’re not anywhere in this weather. You can sleep in the spare room. We’ll figure out how to get you home in the morning.”
    “But what about… ?”
    “Your parents?” I asked.
    Tracy nodded.
    “I’ll call and let them know you’re here. I’ll tell them you came by because you were upset about Rosemary’s death and needed to talk.”
    “They’re still going to be pissed at me,” she said.
    “No, I don’t think so,” I told her. “They have so much on their plates right now, I doubt they’ll even notice.”
    I gave Tracy one of my T-shirts to sleep in and a robe to wear. After she headed for bed, I called her house. No answer. That wasn’t a big surprise. It was late. Knowing what Ron and Amy were going through, I should have expected they’d turn off their phone. I left a message saying Tracy was with me and that I’d bring her home in the morning. I hit the sack then, too, but I didn’t sleep.
    Ron Peters’s marriage was in trouble and he had been having serious difficulties with his ex-wife. I knew nothing about any of it, and yet I was supposedly his best friend. So what kind of friend did that make me?
    Not so hot, I concluded. And not nearly as good a friend as I thought I was.
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C HAPTER 5

    I AWAKENED THE NEXT MORNING to the unwelcome news that there were five to seven inches of snow in the Denny Regrade area of downtown Seattle where I live, with more than twice that on the East-side and at higher elevations. What followed was a droning recitation of school closures. Many offices and businesses were suggesting that unessential workers stay home.
    Which am I ? I wondered. Essential or not ?
    Scrambling out of bed, I pulled on some clothing and then went to make coffee. I stood in the kitchen and looked out onto a beautiful winter wonderland where the streets were practically deserted. With the exception of a chained-up bus or two and a couple of speeding SUVs, no one else seemed to be out and about.
    When the phone rang I knew it would be Ron, and I was right. “What the hell was Tracy thinking, taking off like that in the middle of the night? Where is she?”
    “In the other room and still asleep, if the phone didn’t wake her, that is,” I said.
    “Wake her up,” Ron told me. “I want to talk to her.”
    “I told her you wouldn’t be mad.”
    “Well, you were