Maybe that was why she could put up with the trials and tribulations of the Little Savages: they were so much more of a family
than Nana, as the old lady had insisted Rae call her.
Of course, there was Jamie’s abortion last year: Rae had finessed that so Ricky hadn’t made it more stressful than was warranted
upon his second daughter. And while Brian’s OCD, which had surfaced shortly before Charlene and Ricky divorced, was difficult
to deal with, he was a sweet-natured boy and lately Rae had become close to him. Brian seemed better all the time; he did
get manic once in a while, dusting and washing everything in sight, but Rae kind of appeciated that. In spite of their having
a full-time housekeeper and a maid, chores at the Kelleher-Savage home were often left undone, what with the band members
and recording company people and friends constantly traipsing through the house.
Back to the search for Bill Delaney. She’d called his cellular minutes ago. Same lack of response. No way of knowing whether
it was Callie who’d written down the number or when. The phone could’ve been a throwaway or the account canceled long ago.
With no information on Delaney, an ordinary name in this city with its high Irish population, locating him wouldn’t be easy.
Okay, if a hooker had his cell number, what could he be?
A fellow sex worker. A pimp. Someone in the porn industry. A lawyer…
Yes!
Google search of ABA members. Many Delaneys. She worked her way through them, both in the city and around the state. Narrowed
it down by type of law practice. Came up with two possibles, one on Forty-eighth Avenue near Ocean Beach, the other on Shotwell
Street, close to where the former All Souls Victorian stood on Bernal Heights. It was Saturday, but ambulance chasers who
bailed hookers out of jail were always reachable.
As she passed through the living room on the way out, she called to Ricky, Molly, and Lisa, “When you go to the zoo, tell
the baby giraffe hello for me.”
Ricky had an arm around either daughter. They were watching something on TV that sounded nonsensical. He grinned and said,
“Good hunting, Red.”
S
he has got to be told today, before the visitors start coming,” he said to Dr. Saxnay.
The older man sighed. “You’re right, of course. We’ll give her the weekend to take it in, then allow the first visitors on
Monday.”
“I’d rather they start coming right away.”
“The diagnosis is going to be a shock.”
“She’s aware it’s bad. All that time when she could hear and no one knew it. Besides, with Sharon, even knowing the worst
is better than uncertainty.”
Ralph Saxnay said, “Well, you can attest to that better than I.” He got up from the desk and led Hy toward McCone’s room.
“You go in first.”
It was an attractive room—he hadn’t paid attention to that before—with pale blue walls and matching blue upholstery on the
visitors’ armchair near the high hospital bed. None of this backache-making plastic hospital-room stuff that he could swear
was designed to drive family and friends away. Today the room was fragrant, filled with the flowers and plants from well-wishers
that had arrived steadily since word got out that she’d been admitted here. The blinds were raised, giving a view of the silver-leafed
eucalyptus grove, and the nursing staff had apparently completed their morning routine.
Shar was awake, propped against the pillows. He went to her, kissed lips that were moist with Chap Stick. Looked into her
eyes.
She was blinking frantically.
Yeah, she knows something’s wrong. And she wants me to tell her what.
Saxnay had come up behind him. He seemed to intuit what was going on.
“I’ve come to talk with you about your CT scan results,” he began, moving to where Sharon could see him.
McCone blinked once.
“Frankly, they are not as good as we’d hoped. Now that we know you’re conscious and aware, we can put a name to your condition:
locked-in syndrome.”
The doctor proceeded to explain: the same litany of symptoms and causes Hy had been given: awareness, ability to reason, to
feel emotion and touch. Saxnay didn’t downplay the seriousness of the prognosis, and throughout his speech, McCone’s gaze
remained fixed and unblinking on the doctor’s.
“I don’t mean to say your condition is hopeless,” Saxnay concluded. “Patients have made partial recoveries. Much depends on
you—your spirit, your determination. And, of course, you have friends and family to rally round you. That means a lot.” He
paused. “Have I explained clearly enough for now?”
McCone blinked once.
“Then I’ll leave you two alone.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Hy said, and pulled the upholstered chair close to the bed.
A single tear slipped down his wife’s right cheek. Gently he wiped it away, then did the same with one that appeared on her
left cheek. He touched her arm, wished he could take her hand, but it was under the covers, stuck with an IV.
“This isn’t as bad as he made it sound,” he said.
No blink or eye movement.
“We’ll get through it.”
No response.
“Doctors don’t know everything.”
Eye movement—questioning the statement, he thought.
“Would you like me to go? Be alone for a while?”
Two blinks.
“Then I’ll stay and tell you what the folks at the agency are doing to ID whoever did this to you.”
A
vegetable. A fucking vegetable.
I remember when I was younger, laughing at people with disabilities, the horrible words we used: feeb, spaz, veg.
Well, join the club. For the rest of your life, somebody somewhere’ll be laughing at you.
Tears slipped down my cheeks again. God, I hadn’t cried this much in my life!
Actually, what I felt like when the doctor was talking to me was a lab rat in a cage. Saxnay seemed like a good surgeon, but
in my case he didn’t have much to work with and he knew it.
A lab rat. No, that wasn’t right. Lab rats could move, make sounds, eat on their own. I was more like a mummy. I liked that
term better than the
veg
word.
The effort the agency people were putting into my case touched me, though. At least I was a cherished mummy. Hy said they’d
be coming by and starting to report to me tomorrow; relatives would arrive, too.
Ma… At first I’d thought, Jesus Christ, not Ma on the first day! But Hy had said he’d arrange for the RI jet to pick her up
in San Diego tomorrow afternoon; he’d take her to dinner and put her up at an expensive boutique hotel downtown that she liked.
The former Katie McCone had become used to her creature comforts since she’d remarried and become Kay Hunt, but she still
had a good heart and I loved her. It was just the drama I couldn’t take.
Rae and Ricky, John, Charlene and Vic. Mick, Ted, Julia, Craig, Adah. And everybody else. God I missed them!
I’m starting to look forward to something.…
This case. That was what I was particularly looking forward to. Hearing the details of how they’d go about finding the bastard
who’d altered my life—maybe irrevocably.
But could they do it without me? I thought about that for a while. Something light rose in my chest, like a shiny bubble,
and I would have smiled if that had been possible.
You’ve heard of an armchair detective, folks? How about a locked-in investigator?
S
he took the exit from the Bay Bridge and drove toward the pier, fussing over whether she’d done the right thing to leave the
money in the Peepleses’ safe and agree not to report it to the authorities. Wished she could ask Shar about it. Of course
Shar—who claimed to be a by-the-book investigator—probably would’ve said it was wrong. But then Shar’s own actions didn’t
always follow what the book said.
She’d left the vineyard early, leaving a thank-you note and creeping out into the predawn light before the Peepleses stirred.
She didn’t want to explain her injury or tell them that someone—maybe their missing son—had been sneaking around the stables,
probably trying to retrieve the cash; the news would only increase their anguish, and Julia doubted the person would return.
Her nose hurt and she had a bloody scab, partially concealed by makeup. She wouldn’t be surprised if her eyes were blackened
within a few hours. She’d taken punches to the nose before, and that was the inevitable result.
Julia parked in her slot on the pier’s floor and hurried up the stairs to the catwalk. Half an hour late for the staff meeting,
and she felt like shit. She rushed into the conference room. Stopped. Where was everybody?
Back down the catwalk to Ted’s office. He and Patrick Neilan were there, Ted sitting in his chair, Patrick perched on a corner
of the desk. Ted’s bright red Western-style shirt—the latest of his ever-changing fashion statements—contrasted sharply with
Patrick’s goth black.
“Is the meeting over?” she asked.
“Never got started,” Patrick said. “Adah and Derek and Thelia showed, but none of the folks who are actively working the case.
Hy—who requested the meeting—was on time, but left when we realized it wasn’t going to happen.”
“Craig wasn’t home when Adah got there last night,” Ted added, “and there’s been no word from him. Mick’s cellular is out
of service range. Ricky said Rae went out in a hurry around ten. What the hell happened to you?”
“Hostile encounter with a grape stake.” She explained about her visit to the Peepleses. “Did I do right, leaving the money
there?”
Patrick shrugged, running a hand through his spiky red hair.
Ted said, “It’s what Shar would’ve done.”
“So what do we do now?” she asked.
“Other than you icing your face? I’ll keep calling around,” Ted told her. “Maybe I can gather the troops this afternoon. In
the meantime, Shar’s entertaining visitors.”
Julia entered Shar’s room hesitantly, an ice bag that the nurse on the desk had provided pressed to her nose. It would help
to keep her eyes from blackening, the woman said. Ice hadn’t done anything for her in the past, but she accepted the bag gratefully.
Shar was turned on her side before a window overlooking a eucalyptus grove. The room was quiet and fragrant with flowers.
Julia skirted the bed, drew up the single chair, and looked into Shar’s eyes.
Light filled them, and Shar blinked.
“You’re awake,” Julia said.
Another blink.
Dios
, it was creepy! She’d never seen Shar so motionless and silent. How the hell did they know she was in there anyway? This
blinking could be a reflex.
No. Ted had said she was completely aware, that one blink meant yes and two meant no.
Still, it
was
creepy.
A questioning light came into Shar’s eyes. She stared steadily at Julia’s ice bag.
“Oh, this,” Julia said, “
de nada
. I’ll explain.”
She gave Shar a full report on her cases. Asked the same thing she’d asked herself, Ted, and Patrick. “Did I do the right
thing leaving the money with the Peepleses?”
One blink. Yes.
“What should I do now? Oh, hell, I know you can’t answer me. But I just don’t…”
Shar’s gaze fixed on hers, strong and compelling.
“Okay, I could turn it over to the police.”
Two blinks.
No
.
“Right. We’re not even sure it’s stolen.”
Blink.
“But I don’t think this guy who worked in the stockroom at Home Showcase saved that much out of his salary. Or won the lottery.
And if he had, it’d be earning interest in a bank, rather than stuffed in a duffel bag under the floorboards of his parents’
tack room.”
Blink.
“We don’t even know he’s the one who put it there. Right?”
Blink.
“Or if he was the one I chased through the vineyard?”
Blink.
“So what do I… ? Dig deeper, way deeper into the guy’s life?”
Blink. Then Shar closed her eyes. Tired.
Julia sat by the bed a few minutes more before leaving quietly only when she was sure Shar was asleep.
G
od, these tracking devices were getting better and better!
He sat on his Harley—a more powerful version of the one he’d wrecked last fall—across from the Spindrift Lodge near Big Sur.
The lodge was old and sprawling, its logs washed silver-gray by the elements. Woodstove chimneys protruded above each unit,
and the ice plant lawn between the semicircular driveway was strewn with driftwood. Craig had just checked in—unit twenty.
Mick wasn’t about to go up and knock on the door, though; he’d wait it out, see what happened.
Last night after he left Craig and Adah’s apartment he’d located Craig’s SUV where it was parked a block away and slapped
a tracking device under the bumper. At three in the morning Mick’s monitor showed the vehicle was in motion. Mick left his
condo and followed.
Why, he wondered on the long drive down, was Craig being so damn secretive about his line of investigation? Sure, it was politically
sensitive, but it might have something to do with Shar getting shot and paralyzed. Well, maybe it was just the old FBI training
kicking in. Or maybe Craig wanted to score a big one for himself.
No, Craig wasn’t like that. What he was looking into had to be something major. And he wanted to be sure of his facts before
he enlisted the rest of them.
An hour passed. The sky was clear, but a cold wind was blowing in and the sea was beating against the cliffs, throwing up
big fans of spray. Good weather in Big Sur didn’t last long.
As he waited and watched, Mick thought back to the night last November when he’d been on a similar stretch of highway, drunk
out of his mind and stoned on grief because he’d lost the woman he’d considered the love of his life, Charlotte Keim. So drunk
and stoned he’d decided to see how high the Harley could fly above the Pacific. He’d misjudged and landed hard on the roadside,
hard enough to injure himself seriously and knock some sense into him. Sweet Charlotte had done the same: she was seven years
older than he, and during repeated conversations over the next couple of months she’d convinced him that life and love didn’t
end at twenty-two.