Although her eyes were focused on the small TV mounted high on the wall, they had a lifeless sheen that told me she wasn't really seeing the talk show it was tuned to. Her left hand toyed with the remote control, caressing its contours in a repetitious pattern. But when she saw me, her face became animated and she switched off the TV.
“Sharon! I knew you'd come. It's all a big mistake, isn't it?”
In her situation, I'd have been summoning the police guard to remove me from the room. But D’Silva had identified with me before we'd even met, and she probably still entertained the delusion that landing the Citabria together had been a bonding experience for both of us.
Without responding, I shut the door and went to stand at the foot of her bed. My fingers found the rail, gripped it hard. In spite of the rage and revulsion she inspired, I wasn't about to let my feelings spin out of control; I'd come here for two purposes, and I wanted to accomplish them with as much calm and dignity as I could muster.
D’Silva looked puzzled because I didn't speak. She said, “Sharon, they arraigned me on felony charges this morning, right here in the hospital.”
“I know.”
“Isn't there something you can do?”
“I wouldn't if I could.”
“But—”
“What did you expect, Lee? You broke into my cottage. You set a fire. You stole my friend's airplane. You endangered the lives and safety of people in the air and on the ground. What
did
you expect?”
“… You're really going to press charges?”
“Damned right I am—both here and in San Francisco. For once in your life you're going to learn that you can't escape the consequences of your actions.”
She stared at me. Her stunned expression confirmed that up until now she'd been in denial about those consequences.
I said, “I came here to tell you that. And to ask why you did all those things to me.”
Silence.
“So why
did
you do them, Lee?”
No reply.
“You did them. You must've had your reasons.”
She looked down, began toying with the remote again.
“Was it my letter turning you down for the operative's job? Is that what decided you?”
“I didn't
decide
to do anything. It just happened.”
It just happened.
You hear the phrase all the time these days. Half the population, from inefficient employees to mass murderers, use it to excuse their transgressions.
It just happened that your order got lost.
It just happened that I blew them all away.
“You made a lot of preparations and went to great lengths for something that just happened.”
Shrug.
“What did you hope to gain from your actions? My approval? My friendship?”
“… Maybe.”
“I don't think so. Where was all this supposed to lead?”
Silence. Her fingers gripped the remote, the knuckles going white.
“Where,
Lee?”
She looked up, eyes flaring and then going stony. She raised her hand and hurled the remote against the wall below the TV. Suddenly I was seeing the real Lee D’Silva.
“I didn't know—all right? I was just … doing things.”
“No, you had a plan. You're not the sort of person who operates without one. Remember when your mother was dying and you were working at your father's company? For two years you carried out your plan—embezzling that money and hoarding those morphine pills. And then you put it into effect. And it worked.”
She lay pale and still; for a moment she actually stopped breathing. It was as if she'd died too, and maybe in a way she had, because when she spoke again her voice was flat and emotionless, her expression blank.
“You don't know anything about those years,” she said. “You don't know anything about that day. Or what kind of a person I am. Why should you? You're too wrapped up in being you, in living your glamorous life.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Valentine's Day? I went to your office late, when I thought you'd have time to sit down and talk. I planned to beg you to give me another chance at the job. But you weren't there, so I took a long walk along the Embarcadero, trying to figure out how to convince you to take me on. I'd had a horrible experience a few days before—”
“With Russ Auerbach.”
“You
know
about that?”
“I spoke with him.”
“God.” She closed her eyes for a moment before she went on. “I can't talk about him—now or ever. So anyway, Valentine's Day. I was coming back from my walk, and I saw you and some other people getting out of a limo in front of Hills Plaza. I was there to beg, and you were getting out of a limo, all dressed up in red, surrounded by beautiful people. I followed you into the restaurant and watched you having a good time and hated you because I knew my life would never, never be that way, unless …”
“Unless what?”
She whispered something I couldn't hear.
“What, Lee?”
No reply.
“Unless you dismantled
my
life piece by piece? What did you think that would accomplish?”
“Just go away. Please go away. You've betrayed me enough, don't add to it.”
“I betrayed
you?
”
“You said we'd land Two-eight-niner together, and look what happened.”
I stared at her in amazement. “Lee, we
did
land the plane.
You
lost control of it on the ground.”
Her eyes became slits and her jaw clenched; I sensed she was fighting down a scream. Little Ms. Perfect was getting a foretaste of what she'd be in for in court; there, the facts behind her fantasy would be all that counted.
After a moment she spoke. “Sharon?” she said in a soft little-girl voice. “You think you know everything about me, but you don't. The day my mother died? It wasn't me.”
What next? I waited.
“It was my dad. He gave Mom morphine he'd saved up. I found out about it and was going to tell the police, so he gave me the money to cover up for him and go away.”
No way. The embezzlement had started long before her mother's death—at a time when Lee was in charge of the books. “You'll do anything to get sympathy, won't you?” I said. “Anything, including framing your own father for something you did. You're a very sick woman, and I hope that in prison you'll get the help you need to come to terms with your past and cope with your future.”
“Prison!” The little-girl mask fell away, and her eyes flared. “You fucking bitch!” she exclaimed.
“Ah, that's more like it.” I leaned across the bed rail, looked straight into her eyes. “Show that side of yourself to the jury, why don't you? Won't make any difference: the evidence is plain.”
“You can't do this to me!”
“I can and I will.” I turned my back on her and walked out the door.
On the sidewalk I paused for a bit, taking in the brilliantly clear day—one of those that make our wild north coast a paradise. The sun was already sinking toward the sea; the smoke from the stacks at the Georgia Pacific lumber mill along the shore drifted in the light breeze. Hy was over at Ace Hardware, buying supplies for some repairs he wanted to make at Touchstone tomorrow. I'd meet him there, and then we'd drive south, stopping at a favorite fish market in Mendocino for the catch of the day before we continued home.
Home.
D’Silva had violated but not destroyed it. This weekend we'd reclaim it.
T
he hours while other people sleep are peaceful now.
Hy is one of the slumberers; he lies in our bed, half tuned to danger, but less so than when I met him years ago. Then he was always on the alert—the legacy of living too long on society's dangerous fringes. Tonight when I left his side he didn't stir, and it pleased me that he's secure in this home we share.
I'm sitting on the platform above Bootleggers Cove. It's a mild night for this time of year, and anyway, I'm wrapped in one of seven long terry-cloth robes he gave me for Christmas. Seven, in various colors! Because, he claims, I turn him on even more than usual when I wear this particular style, and he was afraid the mail-order company would stop making them.
The man's a lunatic at times. I love him.
I keep thinking about D’Silva. I'm still angry, even though on some level I feel sorry for her. I guess in time the rage will fade. I guess.
But the randomness of being singled out like that—it's what gets to me. That, and my total lack of control over the situation. How it could happen again anytime, and I wouldn't even know until it was too late to stop it.
Don't dwell on it, McCone. Think of tomorrow. Think of next weekend when, weather permitting, you and Hy will start to look at and test-fly aircraft. Think of the new plane, the hours you'll log in it. The house you'll have built here, the years you'll live in it.
Let life go on. In time this habit of fear will be broken. You'll stop jumping at every ring of the phone, every creak of the floorboards. You'll let go of this nightmare.
But the randomness …
More
Marcia Muller!
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April 1
San Francisco
11:50 a.m.
“I feel like a goddamn fool.”
“What?” I hadn't been paying proper attention to what Hy was saying over the phone because I was trying to decipher the hand signals my nephew and computer expert, Mick Savage, was flashing at me from my office door. I waved him off.
“A goddamn fool.” Hy Ripinsky's tone was injured; my lover and best friend knew better than anyone, and had radar for those rare occasions when I didn't listen to him.
“Why?”
“Because I should've known better than to trust Virgil. What kind of name for a contractor is that, anyway—Virgil? The jerk called me at my ranch and asked if I could come over here to the coast so he could dig a hole.”
“A hole.”
“Yeah, by the foundation of the old house.” Hy was currently at the property we jointly owned in Mendocino County, where we were trying to get construction of a house underway, and where the unseasonably rainy weather was doing its best to thwart our efforts.
“And?”
Mick reappeared in the door, somewhat wild-eyed, his blond hair standing up in stiff points that defied gravity. Again I waved him away.
Hy said, “What d'you think? Virgil never showed. Plus it started storming like a bastard fifteen minutes ago, so now I'm stuck here and I can't find any matches to light a fire.”
“Stuck there? Don't tell me you flew?”
“Borrowed that Cessna we're thinking of buying.”
“You're
thinking of buying.” The Cessna, in my opinion, was a piece of junk.
He ignored the comment. “So now I'm stuck here. No way I'm flying in this storm, and—What the hell did you do with the matches?”
“What did
I
do with them?” I realized I sounded sharp, but it had been an awful morning for me too.
“McCone, you made the fire last time we were here. Think.”
That was true, and I couldn't blame him for being irritated. The stone cottage on the cliff's edge above Bootleggers Cove must be cold, damp, and miserable.
“Did you check the kindling basket?”
“First place I looked.”
Mick reappeared, rolling his eyes in alarm.
“What about that blue bowl on the kitchen counter?”
“Nope.”
“Well …” My nephew was hopping around now, as if he badly needed to pee. “Try the dirty-clothes hamper.”
“Why the hell—”
“Because the jeans I was wearing that last time're in there. The matches're probably in their pocket.”
“And women think we men are strange creatures.”
“Just look. I've got to go now.” I recradled the receiver and said to Mick, “What, for God's sake?”
“Come on. Hurry!” He turned and rushed from the room. I heaved a sigh, got up, and followed him onto the iron catwalk that fronted McCone Investigations’ suite of offices, high above the concrete floor of Pier 24½.
Three of my five staff members stood around the desk in Mick's office when he and I came in, staring at the brand-new computer—something he called a Wintel—that he'd coaxed me into spending a small fortune for. Ted, my slender, bespectacled office manager, fingered his goatee nervously and kept at a distance. Craig Morland, in sweats and running shoes looking nothing at all like a former buttoned-down FBI field agent, had his arms folded across his chest; his expression suggested that he feared the machine might attack him.
Charlotte Keim, on the other hand, was very much on the attack. She advanced aggressively toward the desk, her petite features set in stern lines. “You varmint!” she exclaimed, her Texas accent more pronounced than usual. “When I get through with you, you're gonna be road kill!”
At that instant a sickening thump came from under the desk. “Hell and damnation!” Rae Kelleher's voice shouted. She backed out of the kneehole, rubbing the crown of her curly red-gold head, a smudge of dirt across her freckled nose.
“I
told
you it was plugged in,” Mick said to her.
A cold sense of foreboding washed over me. “What's going on here?”
“Uh …” Mick looked down at his shoes.
“What?”
“I … don't know. I mean, I must've done something wrong.”
“Why?”
“Well, you asked me to print out the report on the McPhail case. And I tried to. But it's … like gone.”
“Like gone?”
“It's gone.”
There were no hard copies of the report on a major industrial espionage investigation, due to be delivered to the client this afternoon.
“So's everything else,” Mick added in a small voice, still hanging his head. It seemed to me that his shoulders were shaking slightly. Well, if he wasn't already crying, I would—in the well-remembered words of my father—give him something to cry about.
“Mick,” I said, “you are supposed to be a computer genius. You got suspended from high school for breaking into the board of education's confidential files. You smashed the security code at Bank of America and very nearly got yourself arrested. Last week—against my explicit instructions—you obtained federal information that even Craig couldn't call in markers for. So how in hell could you lose all your files?”