They rode side by side now, walking easily. “Breathe in deeply,” Juanita instructed Sophia. “The aromas are as engaging as the sights.”
Sophia inhaled through her nostrils. She could smell sage, rosemary, other sharp, almost overpowering odors she didn’t recognize. “This is awesome,” she said. “Thank you for bringing me.”
“Thank you for coming,” Juanita replied. With the slightest tinge of sadness, she added, “It’s been a long while since I had as nice a companion as you to share these spaces with.”
Sophia flushed from the compliment.
They crested a ridge and headed down into a deep meadow, now dry grass from lack of rain. Off in the distance, two men were working on a fence, stringing barbed wire onto posts. Near them, a group of cows were grazing.
“That’s my foreman, Keith Morton, and my grandson, Steven,” Juanita explained. “Let’s ride down and say hello.”
They made their way toward where the two men were working. As they approached, the men heard them and looked in their direction. The taller one, who had his shirt off, waved.
Juanita waved back. “That’s Steven.”
The boy who’s been arrested for murder, Sophia thought. She felt her skin tingle.
They rode to the men and stopped when they were a few feet away. The older man, the foreman, was wearing a short-sleeved western-style shirt with snap buttons, jeans, and worn boots. A straw cowboy hat was perched low on his head. His tool belt hung low over his hips. Steven, Juanita’s grandson, was in khaki cargo shorts and running shoes. His T-shirt was slung over the fence. He was hatless. His lean, muscular body glistened with sweat.
“How’s it going?” Juanita asked.
“Going okay,” Keith answered. He tipped his head toward Steven. “He’s a capable worker. Easier with two sets of hands.”
Steven smiled. He looked from his grandmother to Sophia.
“This is Sophia Blanchard,” Juanita said, making introductions. “This is my foreman, Keith Morton, and my grandson, Steven McCoy.”
Keith muttered a low “Hello.” Steven looked Sophia full in the face and said, “Hey.”
“Hello,” Sophia answered to both of them. She didn’t want to stare at Steven, but it was hard not to. He was hot, and not from being out in the sun. If Brad Pitt had a younger brother, he’d look just like this boy, she thought.
“Sophia’s mother is a detective working on your case,” Juanita told Steven.
“I know,” he answered, still smiling.
Sophia looked off, so that she didn’t have to face Steven dead-on. There was an intensity coming off him that was both compelling and scary. She could see how a high school girl would go for this boy in a heartbeat. Or any girl, even a grown woman.
“Do you come out here a lot?” Steven asked her. He had his gaze fixed on her.
“I’m giving Sophia riding lessons,” Juanita informed him. “She’s a natural,” she said pridefully of her student.
“I’ll bet you are,” he said to Sophia. “You look like it, how you sit your horse.”
Sophia could feel herself blushing under her hat. “I’m just starting out,” she said quietly.
“It’s a good place to learn,” he told her. “And a good teacher to learn from. She taught me, back when I could barely climb up onto a saddle.”
Juanita smiled at the memory. “You were a good student, too.”
Steven grinned back at her, then looked at Sophia again. “I could go riding with you, when you come up here again.”
Sophia felt her muscles tightening all up and down her body.
“Sophia’s my private riding partner,” Juanita said, deflecting Steven’s attempt at ingratiating himself. “You have your own stuff to take care of. Which keeps you busy enough.”
“You’re right,” he answered. The smile faded, but he kept his eyes trained on Sophia.
“Don’t work too hard,” Juanita told her foreman and grandson.
“We’re almost done,” Keith told her.
“Good,” Juanita said. “I’ll see you later. Come on, Sophia.”
“Nice to meet you,” Steven called to Sophia.
Sophia nodded without replying out loud. Juanita turned her horse to ride away. Sophia followed. The old woman and the young girl rode back up into the hills, where they could find a pretty patch of grass, get off their horses, lay out in the shade, and enjoy their lunch.
Later that afternoon, a girl who was about eighteen or nineteen went through the metal detector at the sheriff’s compound and walked up to the reception desk.
“Can I help you?” the duty office asked. He was a uniformed sergeant. He was sitting at a desk, copying some field reports into a computer.
“I want to talk to somebody who’s working on that murder case,” she told him. “Maria Estrada.”
He looked her over. She was wearing jeans, a top that showed four inches of chubby belly, and flops—the standard uniform. Light brown hair cut Jennifer Aniston-style, nondescript figure, a slouch in her posture. Why can’t teenage girls stand up straight, he thought? He had two at home, he was an expert on the subject. He got up and walked over to her. “What about?” he asked.
“To tell them something. That might be important.”
They already had their suspect and a bulletproof case against him, from what he knew. But if this girl had fresh information, they should find out what it was.
“Detectives Rebeck and Watson are the leads,” he told her. “Let me see if I can page them. Have a seat.”
She sat down on a plastic chair that was against the far wall, crossed one leg over the other, and jiggled the flop on her foot. She didn’t seem concerned or nervous about being in the sheriff’s office.
The sergeant spoke on the phone for a moment. He hung up and looked at her over the counter. “I contacted Detective Rebeck. She’ll be here in a few minutes.”
The girl nodded. “Can I use the bathroom?” she asked.
A female sheriff’s deputy led her down the hallway to the ladies’ room. When she came out, the deputy brought her back to the desk area. A few minutes later, Cindy Rebeck, wearing a mid-thigh skirt, low heels, and a linen blazer, came in the door. She walked over to the girl and introduced herself. “You want to talk about the Maria Estrada murder?” she asked. “Is there something you know about it?”
“Yes,” the girl answered to both questions.
Rebeck led her through the complex to the detective’s area. They sat down in her small office. “What do you want to tell me?” Rebeck asked. She had been on her way out to the valley, to a wine tasting in Los Olivos. She hoped this wouldn’t take long.
The girl’s story only took a few minutes. Rebeck sat up straight, listening intently. When the girl was finished, Rebeck grabbed her cell phone and dialed.
“It’s me,” she said. “Good thing I caught you in. We just got a nice juicy plum dumped in our laps. Get here as soon as you can, and bring Tyler Woodruff’s interview with you.” She hung up. “My partner is on his way in,” she told the girl. “I’d like him to hear this. And we will want to take a formal statement from you.”
A few more minutes passed. Rebeck and the girl sat in Rebeck’s office. A couple of detectives stuck their heads in the door to see what was up, but Rebeck shooed them away.
Watson came shuffling in. He was dressed as usual, Joe Friday-style. “Sorry,” he apologized perfunctorily. “There was a fender bender on 101.” He had Tyler Woodruff’s transcript in his hand. “What’s up?”
The girl told him what she had told Rebeck: she had seen Maria Estrada and a boy walking out of Paseo Nuevo. His arm was around her shoulder, and they were smiling at each other. They crossed Chapala Street, and got into his car.
“You’re positive it was Maria,” Rebeck said. She had asked this question already, and gotten an affirmative answer, but she wanted Watson to hear it from the source.
“Yes,” the girl said firmly. “It was her.”
Watson eyeballed the girl. She didn’t seem to have an agenda, but you never know. “Why didn’t you come forward with this information earlier?” he asked her.
The girl shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking that much about it. Then I saw something on the news the other day about Maria being in the mall that day, and I remembered. So I thought I should tell somebody.”
“Okay,” Watson said. He took Steven’s picture out of his file and laid it on the desk in front of the girl. He was walking a fine line by doing this—it could be construed as improperly influencing the witness—but he decided that with everything else they had, he could get away with it. “Is this the boy she was with?” he asked.
The girl stared at the picture. “It looks like him,” she said, after staring at the photo for a few moments. “He had his back to me mostly, and I didn’t know him. I knew Maria, that’s how come I know it was her. I think it’s him, but I’m not sure,” she said apologetically.
“That’s all right,” Rebeck assured her.
Watson put Steven’s picture back into the file. “This car they got into. What kind was it?” he asked.
“An SUV.”
“What make?” Watson continued, as he thumbed through the interview.
She scrunched up her eyes, thinking. “I’m not sure. I don’t know cars that good.”
“But you definitely saw them get in.”
“Yes.”
“Then what?”
“They drove away. Up Chapala.”
“Which leads to Carillo, which leads to the freeway,” Rebeck noted, her voice rising in excitement. “Which leads to Highway 154.”
He nodded. “What about the color?”
“It was dark. Dark gray, or blue,” she answered.
Watson scanned the transcript until he found what he was looking for. He read out loud. “Question, me: Whose car were you and Steven using, his or yours? Answer, Woodruff: His. Question: What make? Answer: A Nissan Pathfinder. Question: Color? Answer: It’s blue. Dark blue, like navy.”
He looked up. Rebeck was smiling, a gotcha shit-eating grin. Watson smiled, too, although not as broadly.
The girl looked from one cop to the other. “Is that all right?” she asked. “Does that help you?”
Rebeck put a reassuring hand on the girl’s forearm. “Yes,” she answered warmly. “It certainly does.”
They wrote down the girl’s information. After she left, Rebeck let out a whoop. “Is that icing on the cake, or what?”
“If it stands up,” Watson said, immediately raining on her parade.
“You think she’s lying?” Rebeck asked with incredulity.
“I don’t know,” he answered evenly. That was one thing about him—he was never too up or too down. A good quality in a cop.
Rebeck hated getting crapped on, but her partner was right—they had to be careful not to be blinded by their own euphoria. “Why would she?”
“Who knows? Publicity, wanting to be part of something important.” Watson looked at the notes he’d made of the girl’s statement. “It’s public info that Maria was in the mall, and finding out what kind of car McCoy drove wouldn’t be hard to do.” He tapped his fingers on the notes. “Her reason for not coming to us with this until now doesn’t feel completely legit, either.”
Rebeck recoiled visibly. “Are you saying she might be a setup?”
“It isn’t likely,” Watson answered carefully, “but it could be.”
“Who would do that?”
“Whoever wants to nail McCoy’s coffin shut.” He paused. “Or deflect attention from anyone else.”
She stared at him, hard. “We have our killer.”
“I think so, too,” he agreed. “But we’d better not blind ourselves to other possibilities. We sure as shit don’t want this to blow up in our faces.”
Luke spread the pile of burning coals across the grate of his barbeque. The mesquite had burned down to a fine whiteness. He was cooking tri-tips. They would take about an hour. Riva had recently gotten him a gas barbeque at Home Depot that had every bell and whistle under the sun, but he preferred grilling over charcoal when he had the time, particularly when he was cooking for a lot of people, chuck-wagon style. The taste of food cooked over real charcoal was always better than gas. Gas was fine during the week, when he was late getting home from the office and wanted to fast-cook steaks, chicken breasts, or halibut, but today he was taking life slow and mellow.
It was Saturday, late afternoon. From their house’s vantage point on the Riviera, the city below them lay bathed in warm, long-shadow sunlight. This was the last full weekend until the end of daylight saving time, which marked the official closure of outdoor-cooking season.
A couple dozen people (and their kids) had been invited over; they had been drifting in for the past half hour. Everyone was clustering on the spacious deck, eating guacamole and boiled-in-beer shrimp, drinking beer and wine (lemonade for the kids), waiting until it was time to dig into the roast, potato salad, coleslaw, and rice. It was a motley bunch—a few old lawyer buddies and their wives/husbands, a lesbian couple he had known since his prosecution days (one of them was a lawyer he partnered up with occasionally), and a bunch of newer friends, parents of kids who went to school with their kids. That’s what their social life revolved around now—their children. Everyone Luke knew who had small kids was in the same boat, which suited him fine. He’d never been happier.
Kate Blanchard drifted over to the grill. One hand was wrapped around the neck of a cold Sierra Nevada, the other held a paper plate loaded up with chips and dip.
“Good-looking tips,” she commented of the slabs of beef on the grill. She chugged down some beer. “If you get tired of lawyering you could become a caterer.”
Luke smiled at her. “Exchange one unhappy set of clients for another? No, thanks.”
“Need any help?” she volunteered.
“Naw, I’m okay. The hard part’s all done now.” He looked past her. “Did you bring a date?”
She shook her head. “I’m single tonight. Unless my daughter shows up later.”
Luke pushed the tri-tips around on the grill to keep them from sticking to the hot metal. “Where is she?”
“Taking a riding lesson,” Kate answered. “At Juanita McCoy’s ranch. Juanita’s teaching her how to be an authentic Santa Barbara cowgirl.”
Luke’s eyebrows raised. “She’s out there on the ranch? Where Steven McCoy’s staying?”
Kate nodded. “Uh huh.”
“You’re cool with that?”
“Not completely. But I don’t like to tell her how to run her life. She’s a pretty independent girl. And she has her head screwed on right most of the time, knock wood.”