Looking out the window at the quiet neighborhood they were driving through, Nina said, "There are two of us, me and my son Bob. He’s eleven."
"No one else?"
"I’m divorced." Don’t be so prickly, Nina, she told herself. Half the world’s divorced—maybe not as recently as you, but—
"You’re one of those working mothers, then?"
"My office is just a few blocks down Highway Fifty, in the Starlake Building. You’ve probably seen my sign. I’m an attorney."
"Ah, yes," Mr. Muntz said, but he looked alarmed instead of reassured. Nina thought, He hates lawyers, just my luck.
"I remember seeing some articles about you in the paper. The Patterson trial and the Scott thing. You do criminal defense work, right?"
"I’m a general practitioner. Wills, contracts, family law ... and criminal law."
"You haven’t been in town long?"
Who has, she thought. "Almost two years now."
"And ... you’re self-employed?"
"I can handle a reasonable down payment," Nina said. She had inherited a small cottage in Pacific Grove, which she rented out, and had a nest egg from her divorce settlement. "I can make the payments."
"I see." Mr. Muntz sounded disappointed. Dollar signs no longer shone in his eyes. The Caddy shimmied a little, as if preparing to eject her. "You haven’t talked to your bank. Firmed up the, ah, loan situation?"
"You don’t think I could get a mortgage? I’m making good money. I’ve been a lawyer for six years. My credit cards are paid up. What’s the problem, Mr. Muntz?"
The realtor had all the sensitivity of a signpost. He piloted around another turn, the sun highlighting his carefully moussed hair and the lines in his infuriatingly smug face. "A single mother. Not long in the area. No employer."
"But I’m a lawyer!"
"This may surprise you, but being a lawyer isn’t an advantage anymore. It’s not a gentleman’s profession since ..." He paused delicately. "Plenty of ’em come up for the gambling or the skiing, like it, and rent a hole-in-the-wall office for a few months, after which they’re gone and forgotten except for their bum accounts payable. Please don’t take offense. It’s the harsh reality of the business world. Those damn bankers, obsessed with stability, you know?" He looked at his watch. "I’m so sorry, I’ve got an appointment. Clients." Actual clients, his expression said, nuclear families headed by husbands with steady jobs.
"Clients, eh? You can’t have too many of those," Nina said. "Not with your attitude."
"Now see here, honey—"
"I’m not your honey. And you just aced yourself out of a commission, pal."
"Well. Perhaps we should head back."
"You’ve got that right."
Head high, Nina jumped out of the Caddy and into her own dusty Ford Bronco at the realty office. An impromptu flea market had sprung up near the Y. Dusty cars and pickups clogged the factory outlet parking lots, turning Highway 50 into a ten-mile crawl toward the casinos. She opened the windows and resigned herself. High clouds drifted overhead, and the air felt mellow and warm. She was regretting her rudeness in spite of Mr. Muntz’s provocations. Half the town would soon hear his version of their run-in. She lectured herself again about discretion, prudence, all those virtuous qualities she would probably never acquire.
Finally wending her way across the state line into Nevada, she parked in the lot behind Prize’s and entered the casino, hoping to shake off the losses of the day.
Weekenders and locals alike smoked and drank and gambled and flirted on the blackjack stools and around the craps tables, their up-front greed for money looking like good clean fun after Mr. Muntz’s tawdry business. As mindful of movement as hungry buzzards, black-suited pit bosses swiveled their eyes from table to table. Around the rooms that stretched from one perennial neon-lit night to another, bells rang and lights flashed, and the unlucky gathered to watch the lucky gather up their winnings. Over at the Tonga Bar, the alcoholics were getting an early start.
Why did she like it here so much? Was it the total acceptance (for as long as she had a quarter left to drop in the slots)? Shrugging, she gave a change person a twenty and started feeding quarters into the maw of a video poker machine.
After twenty minutes, three dollars up from her initial investment, she was getting carpal tunnel syndrome in her right index finger from punching the play and hit and deal buttons. Carrying her white plastic bucket with its scanty load of quarters, she got up and wandered over to the high-stakes room, where real gamblers playing stud poker sat at tables for eight headed by attentive dealers in green aprons.
Sometimes she caught a glimpse of Hollywood people or foreign dignitaries through the doorway. A bouncer trying not to look like one waited to toss out cash-poor curiosity-seekers like herself if they took it in mind to cross the threshold. Stepping out of his line of sight, Nina saw someone she recognized, a woman with sunglasses pushed up over curly black hair.
Although it was early afternoon, the woman was wearing a black cocktail dress, her long slim legs crossed at the ankles, tapping her lacquered fingernails on the side of her martini glass. She pushed a stack of chips to the middle of the table from several stockpiled neatly in front of her. While Nina considered whether she ought to say hello, the woman folded a dud hand, watching her hundred-dollar chips being raked away, her expression blank.
She wore black out of respect for her husband, of course, black to show her grief. It was Sarah de Beers, and next to her, not touching her but staying close by, sat Leo Tarrant.
She saw Nina watching and got up quickly, walking toward her. Brushing past the bouncer, she took Nina by the arm. "Why are you following me?"
"Mrs. de Beers, I’m here to have some fun on a Saturday afternoon, just like you. That’s all."
"I don’t believe it. It’s Quentin, isn’t it? What is he up to now? Are you going to photograph me having a moment of freedom? What does he want?"
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," said Nina. "Now, I can see you’re upset, but I need my arm back."
She let go of Nina’s arm and pulled a loose strap up over her own bare shoulder, staggering a little. "I’m sorry. It’s Ray’s father. He’s going to take Ray’s place, running my life, telling me and the kids what to do and how to do it. Criticizing everything. What’s wrong with coming here to have a little fun? What’s wrong with wanting to forget everything for a few hours?"
Leo appeared, naked adoration sandblasting the rough edges from his face as he looked at her. "Everything okay?" he asked her, his eyes turning on Nina with an entirely different expression.
"I want to go home, Leo. Let’s go."
"Wait. Mrs. de Beers," said Nina quickly, "since you’re here, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask."
"What?"
"Did our decision to continue on up to the summit have anything at all to do with the rest of you trying to reach the top?"
"You feel guilty about that, don’t you? You could tell Ray didn’t like seeing you go ahead of us."
"I wondered."
"He’s dead; that’s the only thing that matters. Just like all of us, you had everything and nothing to do with it. I’m sorry ... about what I said." She leaned a little on Leo as they walked away. Nina looked around. At the craps table nearby, the clamoring reached a crescendo as an elderly man blew on the dice, mumbled a prayer or something like it, and tossed the dice against the back wall of the table. Then there was jubilation from the winners, but now she registered, too, the moaning of the losers.
The fever had broken. She cashed in and went home.
6
PAUL LEFT BEFORE DAWN ON MONDAY MORNING and made it up to Tahoe from Carmel in four hours and thirty-seven minutes, arriving before ten, a personal best.
He checked into Caesars with one airline bag, one laptop Macintosh Powerbook, his cell phone, and his spanking-new Czech semiautomatic, purchased at a Cow Palace gun show just a few weeks before. Opening the bag on the bed, he laid out his swim suit, tennis racket, a pair of Dockers, and some polo shirts.
The leather toiletry bag he tossed into the bathroom, and the thick manila folder he laid on the table by the window, where he had already arranged the Powerbook and the phone. The gun went on the nightstand beside the bed, still in its holster.
Room service arrived with breakfast just as he finished unpacking, and he ate while he booted up the Powerbook. He was calling his investigation of Anna Meade’s death the Windshield Case in his ClarisWorks file. He had already entered the notes he had made over the weekend from Hallowell’s files. He had ideas and he had a list of people he wanted to meet.
Somebody in this town would know the name of the driver of the hit-and-run car. Even a tourist left a paper trail in this day and age. Hansel and Gretel wouldn’t have needed to rely on bread crumbs to find their way out of the forest if they had lived at the end of the twentieth century; any number of things would have been tracking them, from satellites on down.
He clicked his mouse and looked at the accident-reconstruction expert’s report.
No skid marks. Possibly the driver just didn’t see her. Even if she was hit accidentally, the driver might not stop. Panic always headed the reasons, but the panicked innocent often showed up at the police station later to blab a weeping, guilt-stricken confession. The less innocent could choose from a thousand reasons not to come forward, ranging from trouble with the law to irresponsibility, immaturity, or sociopathy. Half the world had one of those problems, and the other half probably had them too.
For the purposes of his investigation, Paul decided to start with the idea that Anna Meade was killed deliberately. She had been happily married, if he believed Hallowell, which he did, so most likely he wouldn’t have to look at any hanky-panky, although there was always the possibility of a psycho somewhere obsessed with her. He sighed. A world full of bad boys. If I can’t have her, nobody can! How many times had he seen the bloody outcome of that kind of primitive emotion when he was a cop?
There was also the possibility of a revenge killing by one of the bad boys her husband the prosecutor had helped into jail. This, Paul found unlikely. Most criminals lacked subtlety. Collier would have been the one left to drain on the asphalt, not his wife, and Collier had not mentioned any intimidation or blackmail attempts.
Then there was the most likely possibility, that one of her clients had come after her. The cops had painstakingly checked and double-checked alibis on all sixty-two of the parolees and probationers assigned to her, but there was still the chance.
In her position, if she was good, she would have learned all the dirty family secrets. She would know what her parolees wanted and dreamed about at night, their weaknesses and strengths, who might stay out this time and who would be going down again. Had something she’d known about one of her clients gotten her killed?
According to the statement in the file by Marvin Gates, her supervisor, Anna was top-notch, one of those caring professional types who burn out after ten or fifteen years and move on to something less stressful. If she had lived, she and Collier would probably have had children. She might have changed to a part-time job or quit for a while to raise them, and Collier wouldn’t have that achy-breaky look of a man who goes through the motions of life without enjoying its fruits.
Too much info, too many possibilities. He needed to start simple with a single end of the string and from there he could follow it through all its tangles, all the way home. He turned away from the Powerbook and picked up the pictures from the on-site police investigation. In sharp-focus black and white he studied Anna Meade lying on top of a white-painted parking stall stripe, her small shoe a couple of feet away.
Though the shadows were long on that August evening the photographer had managed to expose well for detail. Faceup on the asphalt, one of her eyes open and looking off shyly to the side, already comatose, she looked as if she felt slightly embarrassed to make such a mess. The left side of her head had been cracked open and the blood from that injury had pooled around the back of her head. Her legs had settled into impossible positions. The car had hit her broadside from her left while she was walking, and she might have gotten away with broken bones, except she’d apparently gone up over the hood on impact, hitting the windshield before sliding to the pavement.
Stroking his stubbly jaw, Paul thought about that. About ten years earlier he had handled a homicide investigation in San Francisco in which the victim had hit the windshield of the vehicle involved. The body had hit so hard, it had left an imprint of the face on the safety glass, a side view that showed the shape of the nose and an open mouth.
The massive contusion on the left side of Anna Meade’s face looked similar to the injury on that victim. The cops were right. She had hit the windshield. He tried not to think about Hallowell seeing that face.
Find the end of the string that led to the car, and the rest would take care of itself. Even without broken glass or bits of chrome or paint to match from the scene, there might be marks on the front grillework or signs of replacement. And then there was the long shot, the remote possibility that, unless the windshield had been replaced or the car had been crushed for junk, the car might still carry some kind of an impression, a web of cracks, a slight indentation not worth fixing, an oh-so-slightly visible imprint, a memory of murder on glass.
He made some calls and opened a new file on the Powerbook. First, he would read it all, all three years of police work, again, taking notes on the computer. At three he would go to see Kim Voss, the eyewitness.
Kim Voss’s home in Round Hill, on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, was an oddly shaped modern affair that started low and ended up more than two stories high, sheltered behind a solid eight-foot stucco wall with a security gate. Inside the gate, Paul found himself in a cactus forest, the tall cacti planted in massive pots beside a sandy walkway, in front of a white windowless house of the same stucco. The desolate effect was broken by a sun-colored door, which opened noiselessly to present the lady herself, late twenties, fluffy-haired, wearing paint-stained overalls and a wary look.
"Did you read the sign?" she asked, pointing to a discreet brass plate next to her door that said NO SOLICITORS.
"It doesn’t apply."
She came closer, leaning a hip on the doorway and folding her arms as if settling in for a cozy talk. "Well, then. What does?"
"My name is Paul van Wagoner. Collier Hallowell hired me to investigate the death of his wife, Anna, three years ago. I understand you were a witness."
A fleeting look Paul couldn’t identify passed over Kim Voss’s face. She had strong classical features, a prominent nose, well-cut lips. Unlike so many women, she wore her body comfortably, as if she liked it.
"He’ll never get over her, will he? I’ve already talked with Collier a number of times. Didn’t he tell you? I didn’t see anything."
"I really just have a few questions...."
"This is pointless. I saw a car at a distance, no plate, not even a specific color."
Paul whipped out his notebook. "Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. What else?"
"I’m busy ..." she said, but he could see she was weakening. Good, he liked women who weakened.
Paul gestured through the door. "Any chance we could"—he paused and raised an eyebrow—"rake over the old coals just this one time"—his best imitation of Sean Connery in his heyday as James Bond—"someplace a bit more conducive?"
She smiled slightly, responding to the familiar Scottish burr, as Paul always hoped they would, and thought for a long moment.
"Let me see your ID."
He handed it over and she studied it. "You live in Carmel. That’s a beautiful town," she said. "Lots of artists live there." She handed his card back, apparently satisfied.
Paul had seen the acknowledgment of being from a wealthy community defuse suspicion of him many times before. From salesmen at his favorite clothing store who jousted for an opportunity to become his personal shopper for the day, to cashiers at the Lucky Market who waved away his credit card proof-of-bucks-in-the-bank, they fell like supplicants at the magic word Carmel. Anyone who could afford to live there had to be okay, right?
"Great place for painting seascapes," he said, and when he saw the look on her face above the color-spattered clothing, added, "Of course, seascapes get so ... so boring."
"How true." She stepped aside. "You can come in."
She led the way through a hallway decorated with big terra-cotta pots and more cacti. Through the arched doorway most of the house seemed to consist of a twenty-foot-high studio, all glass on the back wall, providing indirect northern light. Stained cloth tarps served as carpeting. A conference table covered with another tarp held myriad jars and brushes, house paint, rollers, and all sorts of other equipment. Paintings and frames leaned in loose groups against the walls. Paul’s eye was drawn to a disturbing canvas, slashed through with orange and green and white. The violent clash of colors attracted his attention. The thick brush strokes suggested an ordinary house painter’s brush had been used in its execution, and he did mean execution. He walked over to examine it, but she stepped in front of him and threw a drape over it.
"I don’t mean to be rude, but like any painter, I’m sensitive about my work. That’s a really old one. I think I’ve improved. Let me show you some more recent work, if you’re interested?"
He nodded. The longer they spent together on these unrelated topics, the more time she had to warm up to the pending topic, and to Paul.
She led him past a series displayed along a wall that ran the length of the room. Her main subject seemed to be needle-sharp cactus in extreme close-up, though the abstract splashes of paint made this debatable. They looked like tattooed cucumbers undergoing acupuncture, or portions of dead porcupines he would prefer not to think about.
"I really don’t know much about art," he said finally, realizing that she was waiting for him to say something. "And I can’t compare your work to the Expressionists or the Impressionists, because I only know enough to appear knowledgeable in a pinch. Is ’wow’ going to do it for you?"
He didn’t know what she had expected, but he guessed he had delivered when she threw her head back in a laugh. "That does me fine!" she said. "You’ve missed your calling as an art critic. You’re a pretty refreshing character, aren’t you?"
Paul was by now enjoying himself. Her finely cut lips pursed as she looked upon these paintings that had a crudeness he actually found rather powerful. She went over to one large painting, leaned over, and brushed a speck away. Sun glanced through the tall windows and made a halo of her hair. She had broad shoulders and a deep waist, a swaying walk that had an impact.
"Let’s go out back," she went on. "That’s my dining room, at least for another month until the weather’s too cold."
Paul followed her rounded, denim-clad rump out the door. Why, oh why, were there so many foxy women in the world to tempt him? Like a cornucopia of luscious flesh, the world spilled them into his path, where there was no way to avoid them or step over them without taking a sample.
The backyard was like the front except more densely potted, a veritable Mojave Desert of spade-leafed cacti armed with prickers like tiny knives, faithful sentinels guarding the stone patio at center. A wooden table covered with a clean white cloth had been set up. Paul sat down in one of the two iron chairs. Behind him was a fireplace with a grill set up and a tall chimney, the whole thing made of white rocks.
"Let me make you a drink."
"No, thanks," Paul said.
"C’mon. If we’ve got to do this, let’s make it fun. Be a sport. I make a mean martini. It’s almost four o’clock, which makes it practically five."
"I’m not much for martinis ..." he said, getting ready to make a little speech about how he hadn’t given much thought to martinis since he last admired Myrna Loy as Nora Charles ordering five of them to keep pace with her inebriate husband back in the days when alcohol had flash and panache and a total Hollywood detachment from its evil effects, but by the time he thought all this up, she had drifted off back toward the house. A few moments later, she reappeared with a stainless steel martini shaker beaded with evaporation and two of those invitingly wide conical cocktail glasses.
"You know the right way to make one of these, don’t you?" she asked, examining an empty glass in the sun, wiping an invisible speck with the immaculate white towel she had brought. She was conjuring up a show for him, Paul realized, pleased. "Shaken, not stirred?" he suggested, recalling his earlier success with Bond.
"No, no, no. Makes no difference whether it’s shaken or stirred. That stuff about bruising the gin is just a lot of hooey. First, you swirl the driest of vermouths in a frosted glass, like this." She poured it out of a silver and green bottle from high up, lifting her breasts for him to notice.
"Then—and this is the fun part—you discard all excess." Keeping her eyes on Paul, she tossed all the vermouth in the glass over her shoulder, straight into a tumorous, twisted pear cactus barely supporting itself against the house, a real Elephant Man of cacti. "Finally, you pour perfectly frigid gin through cracked ice"—which she did, the gin flowing like diamonds from a jeweler’s pouch—"into the now supremely primed vessel." She finished, popped an onion-stuffed olive inside, and handed him the glass, her hand touching his.
"Whew," said Paul. "That was great. You do make it sound luscious."
She made another for herself "Chin-chin," she said, tapping his glass.