With an Extreme Burning (17 page)

“Don't tell me you're having hot flashes,” Laura said. “Menopause at
your
age?”

“Not hardly.”

Owen didn't want to hear that kind of talk; it made him uncomfortable. He said quickly, “Maybe you'd better sit down. I'll bring you some water—”

“I don't want any water.”

“She's okay now,” Laura said. “These things pass. Maybe it was the gin and tonic. You didn't make it too strong, did you, Owen?”

“No.”

“How much gin did you put in?”

“A jigger and a half, that's all. Cecca, are you sure you don't feel feverish? You look like you're burning up …”

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

*     *     *

The burning charcoal in the Webers had a mesquite aroma now. And another, subtler scent that Dix couldn't identify. It was alder, he found out when he joined Jerry and George, because they were arguing about it.

“Alder is the wrong flavor for beef,” George said. “It's for chicken or fish.”

“Have you ever tried it mixed with mesquite?”

“Once. I had a rib-eye cooked that way.”

“And you didn't care for the taste.”

“No. The alder doesn't blend right with mesquite.”

“Enhances it, if you ask me.”

“Well, I'm a purist. What do you think, Dix?”

“I don't know. I've never cooked with alder.”

“We'll take a vote after we eat,” Jerry said. He punched Dix lightly on the shoulder. “Glad you decided to come. I'd just about given up on you.”

“It was the threat of being handcuffed that did it.”

Jerry laughed. George said, “Handcuffed?”

“Jerry said he'd put me in cuffs and haul me here bodily if I didn't show on my own.”

“Oh.”

Jerry winked at Dix. To George he said, “Tell me, counselor. If I'd gone ahead and done it, put the cuffs on Dix and dragged him down off the Ridge, would it have been a misdemeanor or a felony?”

“Felony.”

“Kidnapping rap, if Dix pressed charges?”

“Not unless you tried to take him out of state.”

“What would the charge be?”

“False imprisonment.”

“Denned as?”

“The unlawful violation of the personal liberty of another,' ” George said seriously. “Punishable by a fine or imprisonment for one year or both. Sections two-thirty-six and two-thirty-seven of the California Penal Code.”

“Damn good thing for both of us, then,” Jerry said, “that Dix came down on his own.”

George nodded without smiling; he had no idea that Jerry was jerking his chain. He had been born without a sense of humor, not even trace elements of one. He took everything with utter seriousness, including the business of having fun. Not that he was a stick-in-the-mud; he liked to socialize, he was a good sport, and he fit in well with the group. Besides which, Laura had enough laughter in her for both of them. She needled him constantly about his sobersidedness with the same absence of malice as Jerry's kidding; theirs was probably the best marriage in the group. The joking didn't offend him. He'd learned tolerance along with patience and tenacity in the San Jose barrio where he'd grown up. Those qualities, along with hard work, had made his law practice a success. He had both Hispanic and Anglo clients, both Hispanic and Anglo respect.

George Flores? Harboring deep-seated resentments against a group of friends who were themselves ethnically diverse and who had never done him even a whisper of harm? Inconceivable.

A bray of laughter diverted Dix's attention to where Sid Garstein was overflowing a lawn chair under a kumquat tree, holding court for Tom and Beth. Madras shorts, a bright pink shirt, and floppy sandals gave him a clownish aspect. Typical Sid; even in his business dealings, as head of the largest electrical contracting firm in the county, he dressed garishly and in dubious taste. He didn't give a damn how he looked to others. “I'm not Joe Average, so why should I dress like him?” Sid, the frustrated stand-up comic: He knew more smutty stories than a convention of salesmen. Sid, the ass-patter and propositioner of his friends' wives. Occasionally one of them chewed him out, but mostly they tolerated it because it was meaningless byplay, not intended to be taken sincerely. Katy: “The truth is, he's afraid of women. If one of us ever said, ‘Sure, Sid, let's go to bed,’ he'd run like a scalded cat.” Sid, the happy-go-lucky, childish bullshitter. Except that he was on the board of directors of the Los Alegres Boys and Girls Club, active in two antidrug programs and the county chapter of B'nai B'rith, and donated thousands of dollars each year to a variety of charities.

Sid Garstein?

Inconceivable.

Dix shifted his gaze again, to where Owen was still earnestly monopolizing Cecca's time. Owen was in love with her, had been for years. The hopeless, worshipful kind of love. He might take up with Cecca's best friend for revenge or spite, but neither of those applied to the situation. And Katy's feelings for Owen had always been maternal; if she'd found him physically attractive, she'd hidden it well. Owen: reserved, puppy-doggish, old-fashioned in attitudes and tastes; loved photography to the point of obsession, loved taking portraits of kids most of all. Still waters run deep, sure, and it was possible unrequited love for Cecca had turned to hate. But there was no earthly reason for him to want to harm Katy or Dix Mallory. None.

Owen Gregory?

Inconceivable.

These are my
friends
, he thought. Trivial in some ways, loaded with faults like everybody else in the world, but fundamentally good, decent men. Hateful and disloyal to even consider them.

But how can you know, really, what goes on inside another human being? I didn't know what went on inside the woman I loved and lived with for seventeen years. Didn't even know what went on inside myself until this week.

It could be one of them, all right.

It could be anybody.

In spite of her earlier resolve, she told Dix about the call as soon as they were alone together. She couldn't help herself. It was like a poisonous taste in her mouth that she had to spit out.

They were getting ready to eat. Jerry had put the steaks on; the aroma of barbecuing meat was strong on the cooling air. The smell made Cecca faintly nauseated. Her mind kept trying to associate it with human flesh cooking, Katy in her burning car. Most of the others were bustling around, setting up a buffet table on the patio, helping Jerry at the Webers, brokering drinks. Owen had gone off to the bathroom, thank God. He was driving her crazy with his solicitous hovering. She saw Dix by himself and went to him and drew him quickly onto the path between the house and the garage.

He said, “Christ,” softly when she blurted out the tormentor's threat.

“That last part,” she said, “about the lessen'd anguish. It sounds like some kind of quote.”

“It is. From
Romeo and Juliet
, I think.”

“
Romeo and Juliet
. Oh, fine.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Something about the package … did Amy and I like our presents.”

“Bastard. You did remember to switch tapes?”

“Tapes? What tapes?”

“In your answering machine. To preserve what he said.”

“It wasn't a message. I talked to him.”

“Talked to— I thought we agreed to let all calls go on tape. Why did you pick up?”

“I don't know. I was standing right there when the phone rang and I … habit, impulse, I don't know.”

“You didn't provoke him, argue with him?”

“No. I didn't say anything, I just listened.”

“You
did
record it?”

“I didn't have time. The cassette recorder was in my purse in the other room—”

“Cecca, what he said was the kind of evidence we need—”

“What good would it have done us? Don't you understand? He's planning to murder Amy and me. Unless we find out who he is, he'll kill us the way he killed Katy—”

“Keep your voice down, for God's sake. You're jumping to conclusions again.”

“I'm not. Not this time. And you know it.”

No answer.

“Dix, you know it. Stop pretending our lives aren't in danger!”

He ran a hand roughly over his face, pulled it down, and looked at it as if he expected to find it stained. “All right,” he said.

“We've got to
do
something.”

“What? What can we do?”

“Confront Louise Kanvitz, that's what.”

“Beg her to tell the truth about Katy?”

“Pay her. She'd take money.”

“Suppose she won't?”

“Force it out of her then.”

“Threaten her? Beat her up?”

“If that's what it takes, yes!”

“We're not thugs, Cecca. Besides, she could have us arrested, put in jail—”

“I don't care about that. At least we'd have his name.”

“If she really does know it.”

“She knows. I tell you, she knows—”

“Who knows what?”

Owen's voice, startling them both. Owen had come around the corner and was standing there, head cocked quizzically, half smiling at them. Damn you, Owen! she thought fiercely. Are you the one? Is that why you won't leave me alone?

“Did I interrupt something?” he asked.

Dix said, “No, we were just chatting.”

“Sounded pretty intense to me.”

“It wasn't intense,” Cecca said, “it was just a conversation. Can't I talk to somebody without you butting in?”

The words stunned him. She saw the hurt reshape his expression and didn't care; for all she knew he
was
the one. “Hey, I wasn't butting in,” he said. His voice had stiffened a little. “I came looking for you because Beth asked me to. She wants some help in the kitchen.”

“Tell her I'll be right there.”

Owen glanced at Dix, gave Cecca a longer, hurt look, and went away without saying anything else.

Dix said slowly, “Maybe we'd better not stay for dinner. This isn't the place for either of us tonight.”

“We can't leave now. How would it look to the rest of them?”

“You go, then. I'll make excuses—”

“No. We'll both stay. We'll get through this and then we'll go somewhere and talk, make a decision.”

He nodded. “You'll be okay?”

“I won't lose it and start hurling accusations, if that's what you mean. You go ahead. I'll be along in a minute.”

Alone on the path, she stood composing herself. She was on a ragged edge and it wasn't like her. She didn't fall apart in a crisis. Chet … yes, okay, she'd gone through a crumbly period when he walked out, but she'd still held herself and her life together, and come out of the divorce more or less whole. It was that this thing, this madness, was so foreign to anything in her experience. You couldn't adjust to it because it kept changing, shifting, so you couldn't get a grasp on any of it. The not knowing why, the gathering certainty that he was probably a man you knew well and liked and trusted … those were the things that made it so unbalancing.

But I can handle it, she thought. I am going to handle it. So is Dix. So is Amy. We'll be all right. We will.

It won't be us who ends up getting burned.

For a while Dix felt oddly detached, an almost schizoid detachment, as if only part of him were still there in Jerry's backyard. The other part … running around in a cage somewhere, rattling the bars, looking for a way out. Bits and pieces of conversation bounced off his mind without quite registering: food, baseball, taxes, local politics, jokes, old movies versus new movies, a kind of gibberish labeled the power of positive dreaming. He had no appetite, had to force down his first few bites of steak, but when dinner was over he saw with surprise that his plate was empty except for the steakbone and a few bites of pasta salad, as if somebody else had cleaned it for him when he wasn't looking. When Jerry asked him what he thought of the alder and mesquite combination, he said, “Wonderful, just wonderful,” without realizing until minutes later what the question related to.

Cecca, he noticed, ate almost nothing. Otherwise she seemed to be holding up better than he was, making more of an effort to join in. Trying too hard, but nobody noticed because they were also trying too hard—to recapture the old, easy, relaxed camaraderie of good friends enjoying each other's company. It was not he who was preventing it from happening; it was the specter of Katy. The sudden death of one of the flock was a reminder, consciously or subconsciously, of their own mortality. For all but one of them, maybe.

They stayed outside after they finished eating and the remains were cleared away. They had more drinks, they talked, they watched the sun sink lower in the west and turn the sky a streaky gold, then a darkening pink. And a slow change came over Dix. The feelings of detachment and fragmentation went away; he grew sharply aware of what was being said and done around him, of what was in his own mind. Tension seemed to seep out of him, leaving a kind of shaky peace—the kind that follows a crisis point reached and overcome. Mr. Mediocrity was no longer looking for a way out.