J. Jance - Name Witheld

With Seattle's New Year's fireworks display due to begin soon, the Peters girls-nine-year-old Heather and ten-year-old Tracy-and I shut down our Uno game at twenty minutes before midnight. While Tracy put away the cards, Heather and I retreated to my penthouse condo's kitchen to prepare our celebratory New Year's drink-Thomas Kemper root beer floats.

This was a first for me. Back in my boozing days, if I had still been standing by the time New Year's toasts rolled around, you can bet I wouldn't have been swilling down root beer or champagne, either. MacNaughton's and water would have been far more like it. Even sober, root beer wasn't my first choice, but the girls had overruled me on that score.

Their dad, Ron Peters, is an ex-partner of mine, although we've been friends now for far longer than we were ever partners on the homicide squad down at Seattle P.D. He and Amy, his second wife and the girls' stepmother, had splurged on one of those hotel sleep-over New Year's dinner/dance affairs. With Ron in his wheelchair and Amy six and a half months pregnant, I'm sure the romance end was far more important than either the drinking or the dancing. I suppose they saw their New Year's night on the town as one last prebaby fling.

For my part, I was glad to step in and play uncle for the evening, letting the girls spend the night in the spare bedroom of my condo in downtown Seattle. We had ordered pizza, watched a couple of videos (why someone doesn't strangle that little brat in Home Alone I and II I'll never know!) and played several hands of killer Uno, all of which Tracy won without even trying.

Out in the kitchen, I ladled scoops of ice cream into partially filled glasses while Heather, frowning in concentration, carefully added enough root beer to fill the three glasses with foam without ever overflowing any of them.

"Did you know my mom's coming back from Nicaragua?" she asked pensively.

Actually, I did. Women are forever complaining about how men never talk about anything important. Loosely translated, that means anything personal. Generally, they're right. We don't-not to women and usually not to each other, either.

There is, however, one major exception to that rule. In the not so exclusive fraternity of divorced-wounded men, when it comes to comparing notes on the unreasonableness or capriciousness of ex-wives, man-to-man discussions can and do take place. They tend to turn into impromptu contests-sort of "My ex-wife did this and can you top it" kinds of competitions.

With what was going on down in California, where my ex-wife, Karen, was battling cancer, I wasn't really playing that game anymore. That fact hadn't kept Ron from crying on my shoulder when his ex-wife, Roslyn, had resurfaced after a two-year hitch with some far-out "Holy Roller" commune down in Central America.

Earlier that week, minutes after opening a letter from his ex-wife, an agitated, grim-faced Ron Peters had wheeled his chair into my office on the fifth floor of the Public Safety Building.

"Damn it!" he had grumbled, waving the paper in the air. "Roz is coming back."

"So?" I had returned. It's easy to be unconcerned when the ex-wife in question bears no relation to you whatsoever.

Actually, that isn't true. I did have a remote connection to Roslyn Peters-as a benefactor. Years earlier, I had stepped in to provide a large chunk of the initial seed money that had shipped her and some of her New Dawn associates off on a mission. They had left Broken Springs, Oregon, and headed down to Nicaragua to establish an outpost for their particular brand of religion among the urban poor in the city of Managua. I provided fully deductible mission "grant money." At least that's what my tax return said.

Realistically, my "grant" was nothing more or less than a bribe. In return for a sizable check to the charity of her choice, Roz Peters had relinquished custody of the girls to Ron, their father. Ralph Ames, my Mr. Fix-It attorney, had brokered the deal with the attorney from New Dawn. On the face of it, that sounds pretty heartless-as though the kids went up for grabs, as though they were wrested from a caring, loving mother and auctioned off to the highest bidder. The reality was a little different from that.

New Dawn isn't the worst cult there's ever been. As far as I know, nobody's died in it, or because of it, so far. And when I came up with the idea of getting the girls back and asked Ralph to see what he could do, he set off for Broken Springs, muttering a string of weasel words and saying the whole scheme didn't stand a chance in hell. But once he got there and saw how things were-the primitive housing and sleeping arrangements as well as what passed for hygiene, food, and medical care-he turned into a regular legal tiger. He raised so much hell that the New Dawn attorney couldn't get him out of town fast enough. When Ralph came back to Seattle from Oregon, the girls came with him.

"Well," I had said to Peters the previous week, "I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. You didn't expect her to stay down there forever, did you?"

"I had hoped," Ron said, his black look telling me that he had much preferred having the better part of a continent between himself and his ex-wife.

"According to her, New Dawn is planning to start a mission down in Tacoma," he continued. "They're taking over a derelict old church down in Hilltop."

In recent years, Hilltop has turned into a volatile multiracial neighborhood, the kind every American city seems to have these days. Similar in racial and socioeconomic makeup to Seattle's Rainier Valley, Hilltop has been plagued with more than its fair share of violence and gang warfare. It shows up in newspaper articles and on television news broadcasts, usually in conjunction with stories recounting the sad aftermath of yet another drive-by shooting or drug deal gone bad. It's the kind of place where armed kids insist on using other kids-preferably unarmed ones-for target practice.

"Roz is a grown-up," I had counseled. "If she wants to be an urban missionary, let her do her thing. Besides, some of those shooters and drug addicts down there might actually benefit from a close encounter with a missionary."

"By the way, you're not allowed to call her Roz anymore," Peters said. "Her name is Constance now-Sister Constance. And being a good and loving Christian, she's coming home to take me to court. She's going to sue for joint custody."

"Don't tell me she's planning to take the girls along with her to Hilltop!" I echoed, my own dismay now mirroring Ron's.

"That's the general idea," Peters said. "When is Ralph Ames due back in town?"

"On the third. He and Mary are off on a Caribbean cruise. As soon as I hear from him, I'll clue him in on what's happening."

Now, though, standing in my midnight kitchen and faced with Heather's calm pronouncement, I searched for a way to sound relatively noncommittal. "Really," I said.

Heather nodded. "And she wants Tracy and me to come live with her."

"Down in Tacoma? Is that something you want to do?" I asked.

"Well," Heather replied pointedly. "She is our mother, you know."

Her answer didn't leave me much of a comeback. "Hurry up, you guys," Tracy called from the living room balcony. "It's almost time for the fireworks to start."

I carried the tray of foaming drinks outdoors and set it on the table on the chilly lanai. Without having to be told, the girls both bundled themselves into coats. After my recent bout with pneumonia, I did the same. I stepped outside just as the radio countdown ended and the first pyrotechnic blasts boomed off the top of the Space Needle, sending bursts of red and blue sparks cascading over the city. With the barrage of fireworks lighting the sky overhead, the girls and I clinked glasses and wished one another a Happy New Year.