Last Lie (20 page)

27

L
auren was running late. She'd called and spoken to Gracie while I was outside with Jonas. Gracie informed me that I was supposed to do dinner.

"Things are okay with your mom?" I asked my daughter.

"Cool, cool, cool. Work, work, work," Grace said dismissively, letting me know clearly what she thought of my question. My daughter was ready for me to walk away. I didn't walk away. "That's it," she said, verbalizing her stance, in case I'd somehow missed it. When I capitulated--the alternative required parenting energy and enthusiasm that I lacked--and started to walk away, she added, "What are you making?"

I told her I didn't know. Dinner hadn't been on my radar.

"Can we have coq au vin?" She pronounced it
cocoa vinn,
like it was the nickname of a wiseguy named Vinnie who had a thing for hot chocolate.

Until recently, she'd called the dish "purple chicken." I considered her use of mangled French to be true progress. "Are you kidding? That takes hours."

"I don't care. I had a snack. Who was smoking in here?" she asked, her nose wrinkled in disgust. "And tell me again why we can't use calculators for our homework. And how come calculators don't show their work? It makes no sense."

She didn't want answers to her questions. She only wanted to sprinkle salt into my parental wounds. "Gracie--"

"
Dad. . .
"

I sighed. I shook my head. I opened windows on each side of the house and prayed for a cross breeze.

Lauren didn't drag herself in the front door until almost eight. The kids were fed. They'd each retreated to their private spaces for some alone time. I could tell the moment I saw Lauren that the day had been much too long and taxing for her. She looked like she'd been dredged in flour, fried, and fricasseed in red wine.

Like cocoa vinn.

While she hobbled off to spend some slow-motion mommy time with each of the kids, I chopped some spinach leaves, grated some Parmigiano, and crisped a little sliced ham for a frittata. I took great comfort from the fact that when I was in need of an emergency meal, I was always minutes away from a serviceable frittata.

Lauren started her meal by leaning back on the kitchen chair and cradling a glass of wine. I was about to tell her about Nicole's visit and the revelation about a man on the lane the night of the housewarming when she said, "Ready for this? Hake hit a bicyclist today, Alan. That's where I've been. The whole office is in turmoil."

"What? When?"

"Late afternoon, early evening. On Broadway, near Table Mesa. It was a bad accident."

"Is the cyclist all right? Helmet?"

"Transported to Community by ambulance. Yes, helmet. He's in surgery."

"God. Do you know who it is?"

"I didn't hear a name, babe. It's a guy. And he was . . . in club Lycra."

Shit.
I knew the recreational road bike community in Boulder well. I'd been part of it for many years. If the injured cyclist was one of us--and since he was riding in club Lycra, he may well have been--I probably knew him. And possibly knew him well.

"That's not all. The worst part, maybe? Hake drove away. From the scene."

"Really?" I was dumbfounded.
How could he be that stupid?
"The man is a lawyer, for god's sake."

"He only left for a minute. When he got back, he told other people who stopped to provide assistance to the bicyclist that he wasn't sure what had happened at first, didn't realize that the sound he'd heard meant he'd hit someone, and he just continued around the block while he tried to sort it out in his head. He said when he pieced together what might have happened and began to be concerned that he might have hit a pedestrian, he got back there the quickest way he could, which was by . . . going around the block."

"Yeah? Does that . . . sound right to you?" It sounded contrived to me.

"There are witnesses. The time frame fits. He was only gone from the scene for a minute or two and came back from the same direction he'd been driving before, like he'd driven straight around the block. But still . . . he drove away from an injury accident, Alan. That's a . . . problem."

"Is that hit-and-run?"

She two-shoulder shrugged. "Sure it is. Doesn't mean it will be charged that way, but yes, he's vulnerable. Hake drove away from an injury accident."

"Was it his fault?"

"No determination, but it sounds like it. Witnesses say the cyclist clearly had the right of way. Hake's car swerved toward him. A small impact that forced the bike into the front end of a car that was just entering the roadway from a gas station. Witness statements have Hake talking on a cell phone when it happened."

"Talking, not texting?" I asked. Absurdly, it was illegal to drive while thumbing a ten-character text in Colorado but completely acceptable to drive while punching a ten-character phone number into the same device. Our legislators had determined that certain forms of distracted driving were just fine. Others, not.

"Talking."

The accident sounded like a potential legal nightmare for Mattin Snow. His second legal nightmare in a week. "Is he in custody?"

Lauren swept her open hand up into her black hair, running her fingers all the way to the crown of her head. "Get this: He was on the way to see Casey Sparrow about that . . . thing last Friday at his house. He was driving to her new office on South Broadway. He called her from the scene. She told him to shut his mouth, of course, and got there seconds after the ambulance arrived. She followed the patrol car that ended up transferring him to 33rd Street.

"We got called in immediately, because of the . . . pending issues. I covered some other things for Elliot, but I left the office before it all got sorted out. Elliot is probably still over at the Public Safety Building while the police finish the investigation. They'll have to decide what to do about Hake. Everyone's falling over each other trying to figure out how to frame this. For the media, I mean. The politics of this alone, if you think about it . . . What a mess."

I couldn't stop thinking about the injured cyclist.

"To get back to your original question, I don't think Hake will spend the night in jail. Casey won't let that happen. I doubt that the DA or the chief wants it to happen. Not until there's a resolution on the other matter. This is one big can of worms."

The "Elliot" Lauren was mentioning was Elliot Bellhaven, the first deputy DA, Lauren's boss. Once, her friend. Lately, not so much. "Where does Elliot come down on the . . . drama you guys have been dealing with about our neighbor? Before tonight?"

"I think he sees it like I see it."

Lauren had seemed to be skeptical from the beginning about the acquaintance-rape charges and was not a fan of her young colleague's management of the case, but I wasn't sure exactly how she saw the events of the previous Friday.

"Which is how?" I asked. She had finally started making a dent in the frittata. "Never mind. Eat," I said. "We can talk about this later."

Between bites, she said, "No, I want to answer you. I think it's time for me to give you a better sense of what's been going on, but I think I should say the things I have to say when . . . we're a little less likely to be interrupted. I don't want the kids to overhear some of this."

From her bedroom, Gracie yelled, "Overhear what?"

I was trying to convince myself that my sense of dread about Gracie's still distant, but ominously looming, adolescence was nothing but parental fearmongering on my part. It wasn't working. I dreaded my daughter's coming adolescence.

"Point taken," I said. I'd left some toasted multigrain bread on the counter. I stood to get it. "I saw him come home and then leave the house. Mattin. Earlier this afternoon. It was a little after four, maybe. I was on the lane with the dogs when a Town Car came by and dropped him and Mimi off from the airport. The car stopped for a second--we talked briefly, about his trip. They both seemed to be relaxed, in a good mood. Mimi was quiet. Emily just happened to be on her leash, which was lucky. Then a short while later I saw him drive away. By himself. That was it."

"In the sedan or the SUV?"

"The Caddie."

"That's what he was driving when he hit the bike. Did you smell any alcohol? I mean earlier. When the Town Car stopped?"

"No, I didn't. And I was pretty close to him, too--a couple of feet away. I had to lean down to speak with him while he was in the car. Didn't they test for alcohol at the scene?"

"I haven't gotten a straight answer about that. Casey Sparrow may have intervened before the test was complete."

I shook my head at the mess. Refusing to take a sobriety test was a big problem all by itself. "This isn't going to stay quiet," I said.

Lauren nodded. "Before I left work, my secretary showed me a breaking news alert about the accident that was already up on the
Camera
website. They had Hake's name. The fact that he drove away. They already had a couple of witness interviews. The networks and tabloids will pick it up, too. They probably already have."

Boulder is considered by many to be a cycling mecca, but the natural tension that exists on public roads between bicyclists--whether those riders are commuting, recreating, or training--and motorists is as pronounced in Boulder as it is anywhere. It might be worse here because there are so many bicycles on our town's roads.

The fact that a car had hit a cyclist and that the cyclist was injured was not going to remain secret. Not for an hour. Not in Boulder. The cyclist grapevine would be all over it. Especially if the injury was serious. Especially if it appeared the motorist was at fault. And had driven away from the scene, however briefly.

And especially if the motorist was a celebrity.

I wanted to go back to something Lauren had said earlier. "You said Mattin hired Casey to represent him about . . . the Friday-night thing? Is that news? Or has she been involved all along?"

"No way for me to know. I got the sense that we didn't learn about her involvement until--" Lauren stopped herself, took a deep breath, and smiled at me gently. "I should finish eating this. Let's get the kids to bed. Then I'll tell what I can tell you. How's that?"

"Sounds good," I said.

"Why are the windows open?" Lauren asked. "It's getting a little cold in here, don't you think?"

"Someone was smoking," Gracie called out from her room.

"Someone was smoking?" Lauren said.

"No. Long story. We had a visitor," I said as I stood. "I'll tell you later. I'll close the windows, then I'm going to go across the lane and check on Mimi. I want to make sure she's okay. God knows what she's heard about the accident. This has to be a miserable situation for her. Tell the kids I'll be in later to kiss them good night."

"That's really sweet of you," Lauren said. "Checking on Mimi. I mean, considering. You know."

She'd said it like she meant it. "I'm a nice guy," I said. "I haven't had any trouble with Mimi. Anyway, she's Diane's friend. I won't be long."

"You are a nice guy," Lauren said again, as though one of us needed convincing.

"You'll be okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine. I can get the kids ready for bed."

28

L
ights set on security timers had illuminated the interior of the big ranch house since the couple had left for California. As I crossed the lane, I noted a different pattern of lights on inside. I considered it a reliable indication that Mimi was home. I knocked on the door loudly enough that I was confident the pounding could be heard from the kitchen in the middle of the house.

No answer. I knocked again, a little more forcefully. I added a few extra knocks, too. Still no answer. I tried the bell. I hadn't heard any sound when I pressed the button, so I was thinking that the bell probably wasn't working.

The doorbell had been cantankerous for years. It worked sometimes. It failed sometimes. Right around the time Peter was murdered, Adrienne had been bugging him to find the short in the wiring. Peter never got around to it. Much later, after she'd recovered from her loss and forgiven him for, as she put it, "boffing the nanny," the randomness of the doorbell became an ongoing amusement for her. She liked to think that God was determining on a case-by-case basis if she would know, or should know, whether or not she had visitors.

Adrienne and I had long disagreed about God's omniscient perspective over us all; I still didn't think God was at all interested in whether or not I was able to announce my presence at my friend's door. Or about much else I did.

Adrienne disagreed. She wasn't sure God cared about everything she did, but she was convinced God had a thing about her doorbell. But that was before Israel. She and I never got a chance to discuss her feelings about God's grand design after that. The doorbell was never fixed.

I gave Mimi a full minute to respond. I pressed the button again, just in case. Again, no answer. I stepped off the porch and wandered over to the garage to see if the family's second car, a big SUV, was inside. It was.

My next logical step would have been to call Mimi on the phone, but I realized that I didn't know any numbers for her. No cell number. No home number. No e-mail address. We just weren't the kinds of neighbors who exchanged numbers or spare keys.

As I turned to shuffle away from their garage, my hands in my pockets, I spotted a pair of headlights weaving through the S-curve on the lane. The lights were moving faster than they should have been moving. Had Mattin been released from custody?

It wasn't his Cadillac. I smiled when I recognized that the approaching car was a familiar Saab convertible. It belonged to my friend Diane.

She pulled to a stop between the two houses. She killed the engine but left the headlights on. The Swedish electronics beeped some disapproval at her about something, maybe the headlights. Diane didn't care. She was immune to beeped cautions. She hopped right out of the car.

"You heard?" I said.

She nodded and gave me a quick hug. "Mimi isn't answering her phone. I decided to come over to . . . be with her. She's been through so much, Alan. I mean, nonstop crap, for years, stuff you don't even . . . stuff you can't imagine. She just doesn't deserve this."

"When I heard what happened, I came over to see if she needed anything. Wanted some company. A ride to be with her husband." I shrugged. "I knocked, tried the bell. So far, she hasn't answered the door. It may be that she just doesn't want to talk to me."

In a teasing tone, Diane said, "Ohhh, why wouldn't anyone want to talk to
you
?"

"Really?" I said, only a little hurt. "That's where you're going with this?"

"Kidding. That was very sweet of you, Alan."

"What did you hear?" I asked. "About what happened in town."

Diane said, "I got a call from Helena--she's another friend, an electrical engineer. I don't think you know her. She and her husband were there on Friday night, too. Helena is the one with Gwyneth Paltrow's hair? Does that help?" I shrugged. "Anyhoo"--Diane was cognizant that she was veering a little outside the lines--"she's the one who told me that Hake was in a traffic accident. She didn't know any details for sure. She thought it was something with a bicycle. People are injured, but Hake is okay. He's being interviewed by the police. That there's a possibility that it could turn out to be a problem for him. That's pretty much all I know."

"That's pretty much what I heard, too," I said. Diane would have plenty of time to learn how much worse the situation might turn out to be. Not only for her friend, but also for the injured bicyclist.

My phone vibrated. I said, "Just a second," to Diane. The screen displayed a forwarded text from a cycling buddy. The cyclist grapevine had gone active. All the text said was that there'd been a hit-and-run on South Broadway with a car and a bike. The injured bicyclist was Rafael Toronado. He was critical.

The text was also a plea for witnesses to the accident. And blood donors. B negative.
Jesus. Shit.
My heart sank. Rafa--everyone had called him that, as long as I'd known him--was more than an acquaintance, less than a friend. We rode together occasionally, rarely by design. At the end of the day--actually, well before the middle of most days--I couldn't keep up with him on Boulder's roads. I had a prayer if I could draft him in the flats, but he was a true animal in the steep hills, where my quads always failed me.

If you rode with Rafa, you inevitably ended up in the steep hills. The man had titanium quads. Rafa liked to joke that it was my will, not my quads, that failed me. Once he said, "Quads can be trained. But determination? That's what the mountains test, Alan. Your determination. You have it in your heart, or you don't." He'd pounded once on his chest with a closed fist before he zoomed past me up Left Hand Canyon.

Rafa was gregarious, generous, and well liked in the cycling community. He wasn't known as a provocateur around vehicles. The fact that he was the apparent victim of the hit-and-run would make things even more difficult for Mattin Snow.

"What is that?" Diane asked.

"A text. It's nothing important," I said to Diane. I put my arm on her shoulder and walked with her toward the big house.

"People always tell me that about texts. That's why I don't like them. They're always unimportant. If video games are always unimportant, why bother?"

I was tempted. I controlled myself. I said, "What do you think we should do next?"

"I'll call again," she said. She hit ten buttons on her phone. I bit my tongue about speed dialing. "Now that she can see my car out here, maybe she'll answer."

"It's possible that someone--another friend--took her to the police station, right?" I asked.

"I think I would have heard about that. Did you see a car pick her up?"

I could tell Diane was skeptical. "No, but--"

"Did Emily go nuts?"

Emily always let us know when a car came down the lane. Usually her alert came in the form of a deep-pitched
woooo
sound that was like a practice bark. In Bouvier-speak, I'd learned to take the sound to mean she wanted me to look out the window and make some human judgment. I almost always did what Emily wanted me to do. It was part of our canine/
Homo sapiens
pact.

"No, she didn't hear anything. Does Mimi text? She has kids, right? She has to text. Give me her cell number, I'll text her."

"Okay," Diane said reluctantly. She gave me the number. I texted a simple,
Are you doing ok? Do you need anything? Please call Diane on her cell.

I showed Diane the message.

"That's on her phone? Right now?"

"If the network gods are cooperating, yes."

"How does she know it's there?"

"It makes a sound when it arrives. Tells her to look."

"My phone makes sounds all the time. Maybe I'm getting texts."

Again, so tempting, but I didn't want to get lost in a tech tutorial with Diane right then. "Yes," was all I said. "I'm sure your phone does beep sometimes."

Diane said, "Don't be condescending, Alan. You know I hate it when you're condescending. Have you checked the outside doors? Walked around the house?"

"No," I said. "I haven't. I didn't feel right about--"

"Well, I feel fine about it. Shall we?" she said. She took my arm. She was dressed as though she had come directly from the office. She was wearing heels. Sensible heels, but heels. We started on the ravine side of the house on the south exposure, where the lower-level walk-out entrance had been cut into the slope over a hundred years before. On each side of the solitary door to the basement was an awning-type window that probably dated from midcentury. High above the door, on the main level, were the windows of the current kitchen.

Diane tried the door. It was locked. "Where does this door go?"

"It's actually kind of interesting. Peter told me the history once--his understanding was that this was the original kitchen level of the house."

"It's not interesting, Alan. Don't kid yourself. Just tell me where this door goes."

"The basement. Once, the kitchen. The family that owned the ranch had a maid, and a cook, and all the food preparation was done down here, not on the first floor." I increased the pace of my talking to a rapid clip, wary that Diane would again interrupt. I thought the story was interesting. "A long time ago--after the Second World War--the kitchen was moved upstairs. Now"--she rolled her eyes--"this is the laundry room, utility room, and--oh--in back there's a gorgeous wine cellar that Peter built in a space that was originally used as a root-cellar-type thing. Perfect temperature for wine. All the way in back, beyond that, there's another storage room with the original dirt walls, too. Mattin didn't show you the cellar during the housewarming? It's something."

"No," Diane said. "I must have missed that part of the tour. Maybe next time."

She wasn't being sincere. Diane didn't like old, if old meant anything that approximated creepy. A tour of the cellar? A room with dirt walls? She would demur.

She looked up at the windows above. "What was originally where the kitchen is now? Upstairs?"

"A conservatory. That's what Peter said."

"Ooooh," she said. "Fancy. Are we talking the greenhouse kind of conservatory or the music kind of conservatory? Elizabethans? Or
Clue
?"

"The music kind, I think. The woman of the house did recitals and things. Peter had an old photograph of her way back when from the
Camera
playing a Steinway, something called a Centennial Grand." I shrugged. I didn't know pianos.

"How refined," Diane said. "And to think she could have wasted all that time she'd spent practicing and playing doing something unimportant, like . . . texting."

I laughed. We continued around to the back of the house. Diane paused at the corner and pointed up. "What are those windows? On each side? Is that the"--she took in a little extra air, as though she anticipated needing reinforcements--"guest room? Right . . . there?"

"It is," I said.

Diane went to take another step, but I kept my feet planted. I hoped Diane would say more about the guest room. In our previous discussions about the Friday-night party, she hadn't mentioned anything to me about the guest room. I was convinced Diane knew things that I wanted to know, too. About the guest room.

She didn't offer a thing.

The house's foundation had been cut back into a section of the hill that rose gently, rather than precipitously. Peter had taken advantage of the natural features by constructing an expansive, multilevel, heart-redwood deck that climbed up the hill to match the angle of the slope. Two sets of french doors provided exits to the deck from the big family room addition on the back of the house. Although the house blocked any view of Boulder and the Indian Peaks--both due west--the mountain views to the northwest and southwest from the terraced deck were special.

I led Diane up a few stairs to a portion of the big deck that was nearest the house. It was pretty dark. She did the actual peeking through the windows. I was good with that; I figured that of the two of us, she was the one who would be less likely to be shot as a Peeping Tom.

"It's obvious someone's home, or has been home," Diane said. "There are things out on the counter. Cheese. See the cheese? But I don't see her."

I didn't see the cheese. Diane tried the handles on each of the french doors. Locked.

"They're home from their trip, Diane. I saw them get dropped off this afternoon. They use a car service." That was a gratuitous dig. I regretted saying it.

"I know they're home," she snapped. "Mimi and I talked already. We're going to lunch tomorrow. And sometimes Raoul and I use a car service."

I touched her wrist to get her attention. "Are you worried, Diane?" I said. Diane knew me well; she knew that I was asking a question about her friend's state of mind. And her friend's impulse control.

Diane wasn't ready to go there. She said, "She could be in the bathtub, right? That would explain it."

"It's possible," I said. "But Adrienne had Peter put a phone by the tub. In the old days, before cell phones? It was a big deal between them for a while, kind of funny. He teased her about wanting extensions at all the toilets, too. It was so she wouldn't miss emergencies when she was on call."

My friend Adrienne had been a urologist. A fine doctor.

"I've been calling her cell, not her home number. She might not hear that in the bathroom." Diane located the home number--she found it in a cute little leather, handwritten phone book, with tabs for all the letters of the alphabet, that she kept in her purse--dialed the number into her phone, and hit SEND.

I almost offered to load all the data from her little book into her phone's memory for her. I didn't. The gesture would not have been appreciated.

I could hear a phone ringing, not only from the speaker on Diane's phone, but also from inside the house. "It went to voice mail. It's possible the ringer could be off in the bathroom," Diane said.

"I don't know, Diane, it made a lot of noise in there. I could hear it." I repeated my earlier question: "Are you worried about Mimi, Diane? I barely know her. Are you worried, right now? I'm talking about her state of mind."