McCone and Friends (13 page)

At around ten that night I was once again hunkered down in shrubbery—this time in the yew trees at the Ingleside house, with Shar on one side of me and Lottie on the other. The guy from Bay Alarm had already called Harry Homestead to tell him about a malfunction in the security system and the huge floral arrangement sitting on the front porch. Now he was waiting on the walk for Harry to arrive. And not far away, in deepest shadow, lurked a couple of San Francisco’s finest.

“You really think this’ll work?” I whispered.

“Yes,” Shar and Lottie said in unison.

I looked from one to the other. Their expressions were so fierce that I was reminded of a horror movie where these harpies ripped a poor helpless male to shreds.

A few minutes more and a car turned into the driveway. Its headlights moved over the yew trees, and even though we were well hidden, I ducked my head. The car door slammed, footsteps tapped on the concrete, and a figure in a trench coat hurried up the walk to the security guy. From my past surveillance, I recognized old Harry.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded.

The security man said something I couldn’t hear, turned on his flashlight, and shone it up the steps at the porch where the flowers were.

Homestead went stiff. He took a step toward the house, stopped and said, “How long has that been here?”

“It was here when I checked the place around nine. The malfunction came up on our command center screens at eight-fifteen.”

Homestead was still staring at the floral arrangement. “You sure it wasn’t a break-in?”

“Well, we can’t be a hundred percent certain, but there’s no evidence of tampering. All the same, if you’ll give me your keys, I’ll check around inside—”

“No! I mean, don’t got to the trouble. I’ll take it from here.”

“It’s no trouble—”

“Just go. Please.” The security guy shrugged and went down the driveway to his car.

Harry stayed where he was, staring at the dark porch. Finally he squared his shoulders and started up there. At the top of the steps he took out what I guessed was a Bic and flicked it. The flame flared, wavered and went out as he dropped the lighter. And Harry let out a sound that made the hair on the back of my neck standup. “Got him!” Lottie whispered.

Next I heard Harry fumbling with the lock. The door opened and banged back against the inside wall. Light came on overhead, and Harry pushed the flower arrangement aside and stumbled down the hallway. Other lights flashed on. Progressing from the front to the back of the house. Lottie murmured, “I’d say he’s as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers.”

A few seconds later the cops who had been watching nearby stepped out of the shadows and flashed us thumbs-up sign. Hands on their holstered guns, they climbed the steps to investigate whoever it was who’d entered a long-unoccupied house in one of the city’s most crime-ridden areas.

Shar stood up and brushed a piece of yew tree out of her hair. “The flowers really spooked him! Sylvester Piazza must’ve done one hell of a job.”

“Actually, the arrangement doesn’t exactly match Susan Cross’s original.” Lottie said.

“Oh?” Shar’s eyes were on the house.

“Yeah. Sylvester couldn’t come get any giant bird of paradise, so I came up with the idea of substituting something even more effective.
Sansevierta.
”

“What’s that?”

Lottie grinned wickedly. “Something that’s highly appropriate, given that Harry lured his wife here on the pretext that she was to meet his mother. The common name for
Sansevierta
is mother-in-law’s tongue.”

Shar started to laugh, and she was still laughing when the cops dragged a handcuffed Harry from the garage. They’d found him checking the freezer to make use Susan Cross hadn’t risen from the dead to create one last flower arrangement.

“Duck if you see a cop, Ted.”

And so we were off on our mission: my boss, Sharon McCone; my partner, Neal Osborn; and me, Ted Smalley. She, the issuer of my orders, drove her venerable MG convertible. He sat slouched and rumpled beside her. I was perched on the backseat, if you could call it that, which you really can’t because it’s nothing more than a shelf for carrying one’s groceries and such. And illegal for passengers, which is why I had to keep a keen eye out for the law.

I think our minor vehicular transgression made Shar feel free—far away from her everyday concerns about clients and caseloads at the investigative agency she owns. I knew our excursion was taking Neal’s mind off the rising rent and declining profits of his used bookstore. And even though I entertained an image of myself as a sack from Safeway, my thinning hair ruffling like the leaves of a protruding bunch of celery, I still felt like a kid cutting school. A kid who had freed himself from billing and correspondence, to say nothing of keeping five private investigators and the next-door law firm in number-two pencils and scratch pads.

Soon we were across the Golden Gate Bridge and speeding north on Highway 101. It was a summer Friday and traffic was heavy, but Shar made the MG zip from lane to lane and we outdistanced them all. Our mission was a pleasurable one: a stop along the Russian River to look at and perhaps purchase the jukebox of Neal’s and my dreams, than a picnic on the beach at Jenner.

Our plans had been formulated that morning when Shar called us at the ungodly hour of six, all excited. “One of those jukeboxes you guys want is advertised in today’s classified,” she said. “Seeburg Trashcan, and you won’t believe this: It’s almost within your price range.”

While I primed my brain into running order, Neal went to fetch our copy of the paper. “Phone number’s in the 707 area code,” he said into the downstairs extension. “Sonoma County.”

“Nice up there,” Shar said wistfully.

“Maybe Ted and I can take a drive on Sunday, check it out.”

I issued a Neanderthal grunt of agreement. Till I have at least two cups of coffee, I’m not verbal. “I’ve a feeling somebody’ll snap it up before then,” she said.

“Well, if you’ll give Ted part of the day off, I can ask my assistant to mind the store.”

“I…oh, hell, why don’t the three of us take the whole day off? I’ll pack a picnic. You know the sourdough loaf I make, with all the melted cheese and stuff?”

“Say no more.”

Shar exited the freeway at River Road and we sped through vineyards toward the redwood forest. When we rolled into the town of Guerneville, its main street mirrored our holiday spirits. People roamed the sidewalks in shorts and t-shirts, many eating ice cream cones or by-the-slice pizza; a flea market in the parking lot of a supermarket was doing a brisk business; rainbow flags flapped in the breeze outside gay-owned business.

The town has been the hub of the resort area for generations; rustic cabins and summer homes line the riverbank and back up onto the hillsides. In the seventies it became a vacation-time mecca for gays, and the same wide-open atmosphere as in San Francisco’s Castro district prevailed, but by the late eighties the AIDS epidemic, a staffing economy, and a succession of disastrous floods had taken away the magic. Now it appeared that Guerneville was bouncing back as an eclectic and bohemian community of hardy folk who are willing to yearly risk cresting flood waters and mud slides. I, the grocery sack, smiled benevolently as we cruised along.