“She didn’t do it!” Beth said, her voice quavery. “We can’t lose her too. Not after Chris. I couldn’t stand it.”
Daria leaned forward. “She’s just sixteen. She’s so f— screwy, Nina. She does things and doesn’t know why. I don’t know why . . .” her voice trailed off.
“You understand we might lose?” said Nina.
“Do I look like a moron?” asked Daria. “Of course I know we might lose! I just know we won’t. We can’t!” She was getting upset again.
Tapping Daria’s foot with the toe of her boot, Beth said softly, “That’s right, Daria. Everything will be all right.” Directing herself to Nina, she said, “I wish . . . I wish I could believe this situation will work out. I’m afraid for Nikki. I’m afraid for all of us.” She gazed out the window at Tallac. Touched by ragged white clouds, the mountain loomed. “Too many things have happened for me to imagine anything ahead but more tragedy.” Reaching over, she touched her sister’s hand. “Daria’s an optimist. That’s her charm.”
“I just hate a defeatist attitude,” Daria said. “If Nina doesn’t think she can win . . .”
“I have as much hope of that as anyone could,” said Nina firmly.
“Well, that’s what I like to hear,” said Daria.
Beth reached into a woven leather bag and pulled out her checkbook. Setting it down on Nina’s desk, she began to write. “R-e-i-l-l-y. Is that right?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Is fifty thousand dollars enough to start?”
“Uh, that’ll be fine.”
Nina realized Sandy’s typing had ceased several minutes before, and at the same moment, she thought she heard furtive rustling behind the door.
The sound of Sandy jumping for joy.
“Mrs. Sykes . . .”
“Beth.”
“All right, Beth, Daria, I know this is a very tough time for you, but there are a few things we should touch on before you leave. I’ll be hiring help to put together Nikki’s defense. Paul van Wagoner is the private investigator I usually work with. He’s very sharp, very experienced, a former homicide detective. We need to work fast. I’m counting on your cooperation.”
“You’ve got it,” Daria said.
“Where are you staying at the moment, Beth?”
“I’m at the Embassy Suites but the police say I can return home this weekend.”
“We’ll want to look at the house at some point.”
“Of course,” she said in a low voice.
“Have the police determined whether anything was stolen the night your husband died?”
“Nothing was missing from the house. I think they are going on the premise that Bill interrupted the thief before he got anything. Then . . . he was scared off after what he had done. You know about the thefts around the lake?”
“Yes,” Nina said. “Did the police hint at whether they thought this event might be related to that series of crimes?”
“I know they are looking at links,” Beth said. “That’s all they said about it.”
“Good.” Nina glanced at her notes. “I understand your husband was a very successful surgeon.”
“He was,” Beth replied. “He ran his own clinic and kept very busy.”
“What will happen to his patients?”
Beth looked confused, as if she hadn’t given that any thought at all. “I guess Dylan will have to hire an associate. Dylan Brett, his partner.”
“I take it you aren’t very involved in his business?”
“No.”
Nina wrote down the partner’s name and details about the clinic location. They would need to go there soon.
“Did you know your son—Christopher—was coming up to Tahoe on Saturday night?” she asked Beth.
Beth took a minute to answer, and appeared to be deep in thought. She may have simply been giving herself time to contain her feelings. “I didn’t know but we loved having Chris home. We encouraged him to visit anytime.”
“Was he coming specifically to visit his father?”
“Maybe he thought he would catch both of us. He didn’t know I was down there visiting a girlfriend. We were just going to shop, go to a movie, that kind of thing. It was such a quick trip, and it was getting close to his finals, so I didn’t expect to see him. I hadn’t spoken to him for a couple of days.”
“Isn’t it unusual for a boy his age . . .” Nina consulted her notes again, but before she could find the answer, Beth spoke again.
“Chris was only nineteen.”
“Isn’t it unusual,” Nina continued, this time very gently, “for someone so young to charter his own plane?”
“Not really,” Beth said. “No. Chris already had lived away from home for nearly two years. We always used charters so that we could keep our own schedules. He would be comfortable with that.”
“What about the expense?”
“Chris is . . .” she swallowed, and started again, her voice choked, “. . . was . . . a full-time student. We covered all of his expenses, and he knew we could afford it. He had our permission to charge anything he needed to one of our credit cards.”
Daria, whose arms were crossed lightly across her chest, sighed. She had apparently been musing about Chris. “You know, you were such a great mom, Beth. You have nothing to knock yourself about. You were able to give that boy everything he ever wanted, and you did! Nobody could have loved him more. You gave him a happy life.”
Stunned by this unintentionally brutal reduction of nineteen years of motherhood, Beth said, “Oh, Daria.” Putting her head into her hands, she wept again, this time inconsolably.
Stepping inside Nina’s office, Sandy shut the door. Beth and Daria had gone, Beth still crying.
“I expect a passel of people are out there waiting to see me . . .” Nina heaved out a breath, letting the emotions of the previous meeting go.
“I need to tell you something before you find out for yourself,” Sandy said. She came in and sat down in the chair next to Nina’s. “It’s about Linda.”
“Linda?”
“Linda Littlebear. You came to my wedding. She was our minister.”
“I remember. The Shoshone woman from Death Valley.”
“Part Shoshone. Her mom was an Anglo park ranger originally from Virginia. Anyway, Linda sued him. Dr. Sykes.”
“Really.”
“Did you know people can die from plastic surgery?”
“It makes sense,” Nina said, “but no, I don’t associate that kind of surgery with death. Who are you talking about, Sandy?”
“Linda’s daughter Robin hated her nose, which was too much like Linda’s. Too Native looking. Too ethnic. She begged and begged for surgery. For years, Linda resisted, talked politics, talked sense. Finally, for her sixteenth birthday present, she gave in. Linda bought Robin a new nose. To make her happy, you know?”
Nina nodded.
“They went to Sykes but there were complications. Robin was in the operating room for seven hours. She died some hours later.”
“How?”
“She quit breathing. Happy Birthday.”
“Your friend sued for wrongful death?”
“There was an insurance settlement. I don’t know how much. How much does the life of a sixteen year old go for these days?”
“How awful. What a tragedy! But, Sandy, I’m sure she was fully informed of the risks, signed papers and so forth.”
“You don’t go into a nose job expecting to die,” said Sandy.
Unable to refute this logic, Nina asked, “Did Linda blame Dr. Sykes for her daughter’s death?”
“She did, but she blamed herself more for giving in. Why couldn’t Robin see how beautiful she was? Anyway, Linda would never hurt that man. She just has a big mouth. Makes her a good minister.”
“Has she said something about Dr. Sykes’s death, Sandy?”
“Talk to her if you want to know her side of the story.”
“So she blamed him for her daughter’s death,” Nina said, thinking about it. “I can imagine how she must have felt.”
“Maybe you can,” said Sandy, and Nina felt a rare current of sympathy pass between them. Sandy knew all about her, all her foibles and fears. Her preferred lunches. How her husband had died.
For a big woman, Sandy moved lightly. Swinging the door to the office open in one movement, she motioned to a waiting client.
“Linda’s been hinting that she has some information for you. I’ll set it up,” she said, pulling the door shut behind a man that scurried forward fast as a rabbit into one of the orange chairs in Nina’s office, planted himself there and crossed his arms, as if daring them to try to displace him.
CHAPTER 4
“MR. VAN WAGONER—may I call you Paul?”
“Please do,” Paul said. The interviewer had very pretty knees, sharply outlined by the black stockings she wore. The face in its trendy specs was about fifty, with a warmly interested look he distrusted. She was a high-school teacher working as a stringer for the
Monterey Herald
, the biggest paper on the central coast of California. Which wasn’t saying much.
And he was the interviewee. Call me Ishmael, call me a cab, he thought. Just so you write it up so I sound experienced, charming, and brilliant.
Which should be no stretch. All he had to do was act naturally.
She had warmed up by nosing around his condo while he was in the kitchen fixing ice water. He had caught her eyeballing the bed, which was large, the better to eat you with, my dear, he had wanted to say, although he refrained. She had stopped under the paintings of mountains and a blowup of himself and his friend Jack climbing at Pinnacles many years before. “Your brother?” she asked, but Paul told her no and she lost interest. Then, drifting around the living room, putting her hand on the back of his leather chair, fingering a bowl of eucalyptus he had just picked out back to fight the dusty smells, she had stopped at a picture of his mom and pop, telling him, “You look like your dad,” something you might not find so flattering when the woman is saying that you resemble a man you will always consider ancient.
“So you’ve just returned from Washington,” she said, setting a recorder on the table between them. She wore a red AIDS ribbon and a camisole rather than a bra under her shirt.
Paul deduced that she was a former hippie whose radical politics had cooled to a tepid PC temperature. “I got back a couple of days ago. Haven’t even been into my office yet. I was head of a security detail for Senator Ashford of Kentucky.”
“How did you and the senator get along?”
“He plays a great game of golf.”
“Is he still trying to keep the women of our country from exercising their reproductive rights?”
Ah, a trick question. And so early in the interview. “Not at all,” Paul said. “I’m sure he is in favor of reproduction of all kinds.” A picture formed in his mind of the senator and his current lassie in the back of the limo, exercising.
“I see. Well, you have had a very exciting career, Paul. I’ve been hoping to have a chance to talk with you for some time. You won a scholarship to Harvard for your undergrad studies, and have an M.S. from Northeastern University in Criminal Justice, I believe you said on the phone?”
“Right.”
“You were a homicide detective when you left the San Francisco Police Department a few years ago, right?”
“Yes.”
“How many murder cases would you say you worked on during the years in San Francisco?”
“Dozens. I couldn’t say.”
“What would you say was the most difficult case?”
“Depends on what you mean. The worst were times when we got the bad guy, but the jury let him off.”
“It must be awful, arresting a killer and then having him get off in court. Does it happen often?”
“Less so these days.”
The line of a woman’s body always drew a man’s eye to one part. Paul couldn’t take his eyes off her adorable knees, which people must have been patting her whole life. “Besides,” he went on, “I have found over the years that even if the legal system doesn’t work right in an individual case, society tends to provide the punishment. And that’s how it should be.”
“What do you mean? Vigilante justice? Lynching?”
“Not exactly. Ostracism. Inability to find a job. Divorce. The wife always knows. Loneliness, depression. Guilt. That’s the big one. And, face it, once in a while, citizens do have to take the law into their own hands.”
“Give me an example, Paul.”
“Oh, Ellie Nesler. Killing the guy who molested her son. Shooting him down in open court. He wasn’t going to pay like he should pay.”
“You agree with her act of violence?” Raised eyebrows.
“Definitely.”
“Coming from a homicide detective, that’s an unsettling statement.”
Paul smiled. “Ex-homicide detective. I am now a private detective. With offices right here in Carmel.” But her pen didn’t move. She wasn’t interested in putting in the plug for Van Wagoner Investigations yet.
“Even so. You agree that a private citizen may sometimes be justified in killing another human being? I don’t mean in self-defense of course.”
“Occasionally.” She took off her glasses, revealing disapproving bleeding-heart-liberal eyes.
“When?” she said.
“How did we get on this topic?” Paul said. “Of course I believe in following the law. My license depends on it.”
“It sounds like you’re avoiding the question, Paul. Let’s talk more about Ellie Nesler.”
“A good mom,” Paul said.
“But she was arrested and spent many years in jail. She didn’t get to raise her son. How is that a good result?”
“Her son understands,” Paul said, wanting to end the conversation. Why had he allowed her to stray into the militarized zone? You couldn’t convince people like her. People either comprehended or they didn’t. “She did what she had to do.” And, not that he was about to mention it ever to anybody, he had done the same.
Seven months ago, Paul had killed a killer, not to restore honor, but simply to end a reign of terror. Nobody knew it, and nobody ever would.
Looking back now, he saw Nina’s and Bob’s frightened eyes superimposed over a white glaze of snow and knew he would do it again. He wasn’t proud of it. Sometimes you did what you had to do.
The cold primitive place inside himself that had committed that act had always existed and might exist in everybody, but you could go whole lifetimes without exploring this place. He hadn’t known he had it in him, and the knowledge of what lurked there did make the old homicide cop in him deeply uneasy. With that act, he had permanently severed his ties with simple notions and repudiated the ideals that had motivated him for most of his life.
“Do you think that it was wrong of the jury to convict her and send her to jail?” the interviewer was saying.
“Yes.”
“But people can’t just go around and—”
“Molest other people’s children,” Paul said, finishing for her, getting irritated. He wanted to talk about Van Wagoner Investigations. She seemed to be zeroing in on certain closely held opinions that he didn’t want his clients reading about the next day. On the other hand, he couldn’t stand weaseling around.
“It’s a free country,” he said. “I have some personal thoughts about these things but in my work, I follow the rules.”
“Did your personal opinions lead to your leaving the SFPD? And two years later, the Monterey Police Department?”
“I preferred running my own show,” Paul said. “It was a natural progression.” A bumpy one, too, having to do with not accepting authority, a problem that had been solved when Paul opened his own business.
She smiled. “Well, Paul, your office is located right here in Carmel on Delores. What kind of cases do you take? Tell me about your work.”
“Van Wagoner Investigations handles a lot of things,” Paul said, feeling much kinder toward her now that they were getting down to it. “A lot of it is helping businesses settle bad debts. Collections. Child custody cases. Finding hidden assets. Locating missing people. Once a kid asked me to find his father. I work a lot with attorneys preparing for trial. Criminal cases, mostly.”
“What’s the best thing about your work?”
“Being outside in the middle of the day. I’m not the office type.”
“No, you don’t look like the office type. What’s the worst thing about your work?”
“Hmm. Have to say, I love my work.”
“There must be something. You deal with a lot of emotional people. Do the emotions rub off?”
“Not anymore.” She waited, but he didn’t add anything.
“Why Carmel? What brought you here?”
“The job. I like the beach. Love Big Sur, Point Lobos. Play Pebble Beach when I get the chance.”
“Your family must love it too.”
“My parents live in San Francisco. My ex-wives live in Reno and last I heard, San Diego.”
She looked sympathetic, which surprised him. He felt that his bachelor lifestyle was enviable.
“I just find it hard to believe that the little old Monterey Peninsula would have all this drama going on,” she said. “Enough to support several investigative agencies.”
“We work all over the state, but there’s plenty going on here.”
And then she wanted details, and he wasn’t going to talk about local cases, and they fenced for a while, and then they shook hands and the knees disappeared behind the door of her Chevy Suburban.
Stopping in the kitchen for a Tuborg, Paul went out to the balcony overlooking the poison-oak forest on one side of the condo building. Afternoon sun filtered through the Carmel oaks. Everything felt unfamiliar. He had only arrived back from Washington a few days before, late at night. After driving thankfully into his parking spot under the building, he had vaulted up the stairs and turned the lights on in his condo to uncover only a rough approximation of the enchanting seaside hideaway of his memory. He had used the place as a way station rather than as a home lately, and it looked sorry as a bowl of rotting fruit and smelled about as zesty.
The first thing he had done was to get his nest in order, which involved hiring cleaning and repair services at a premium for speedy work. Then he wasted time waiting while people didn’t show up, spent another few hours on the phone haranguing the miscreants, and squandered more hours supervising.
Still, after six months of being empty, even spruced-up, the place felt as empty as a sarcophagus after a grave robber’s binge.
He was going to have to do some hustling, too. He would have come back with a fat bank account, except that Pop had had that little stroke, and the money he had made in D.C. and most of Paul’s savings had gone to the folks up north.
Not to worry. In a few months he would be rolling again.
He leaned over the railing to watch a lizard on the deck below his. It slithered into the sun and froze, its blood warming slightly in the spring afternoon, waiting patiently for an excuse to move, eyes full of philosophical detachment but in fact attuned to any flicker of movement. It waited for prey, and when prey passed by it would strike. Paul observed the lizard for a few minutes, watching it jump into action, snapping at invisible passersby, and it grew larger in his mind, man-sized, and suddenly his wet hand slipped and he was on his toes, going over, madly gripping the railing and watching the full beer bottle fall with a crash to the concrete parking lot three stories down.
Just in time he caught himself, openmouthed and ready to scream, eyes bulging and hands gripping the railing. He fell back onto his deck, gasping.
Had he really almost killed himself there? Casually fallen over the railing like a goddamn fool in a moment of inattention? Feeling profoundly shocked, he lay propped on an arm, blinking, getting his heart back into his chest.
After a while he went back into the kitchen and popped another beer. Nothing had actually happened, except that he had to go clean up the broken glass before somebody drove over it. The fall amounted to a nonevent. But he felt very odd about it. The week before, he had slammed the limo door on his index finger. He held up his hand. Blue had turned yellow and black.
He’d have to pay more attention, that was all.
Drinking half the bottle in one long series of gulps, he set it down on the coffee table and picked up the phone. Time to roll.
“Trumbo and van Wagoner,” said a voice.
Since when did Deano’s name get mentioned, much less first in line? Oh, well. Deano had been substituting for six months. It was probably less confusing while Paul was gone.
“Hey, Deano,” he said. “It’s me.”
“Hey! How you doin’, buddy?”
“Great. Just arrived back a couple of days ago. This morning, I did a quickie interview for the
Herald
to drum up some business, and here I am.”
“All right! How long you in town for this time?”
“I’m back. The job’s over. Finished up early.”
A pause. “That’s just great!”
Deano sounded a little flat. Well, having Paul back meant the end of having the run of the place. Deano was an old friend from the Monterey police who had been working for Paul while figuring out what else he was going to do with the rest of his life. He had explored accounting school, then played around with the idea of opening up an Italian restaurant on Ocean Avenue. Finally, he had accepted Paul’s offer as a stop-gap arrangement. For months now he had been managing the business, and recently the reports hadn’t been sounding too good. That had created another incentive for Paul to come back. Anyway, Deano would lay it all out at the office, and Paul would get busy pumping some new life into the old girl. Maybe Deano was disappointed that Paul was back. Tough. Paul owned the business. That was the fact, Jack.
“Let’s get together,” Deano said, putting on a more plausible show of enthusiasm. “Dinner? I’ll fill you in.”
“I thought I’d stop by the office in a half hour or so.”
“Not a good plan, ol’ buddy.” Paul could almost hear the long hair slithering from side to side over his shoulders as Deano shook his head. He was making up for the regulation short haircuts of his cop days. The black Cossack mustache he wore these days wouldn’t have gone over too well on the force either. He claimed its rakish look drove women mad.
“Why’s that?”
“I wasn’t expecting you. I need a chance to straighten up in here before you come waltzing in to claim the kingdom.” He laughed. “At least give me a day to get someone in to do the filing.”
Paul thought about it. Yeah, cut Deano some slack, if he wanted it.
“Okay. The Hog’s Breath?”
“Shut down. Big deal here, Clint’s restaurant closing. Surprised you didn’t hear about it. Let’s try Triples in Monterey. They do a mean gazpacho. Seven okay? I’ve got a few things to do here.”
“Sure.” So the Hog’s Breath was gone. Nothing good lasted, baby, he knew that. Still, it was a blow. He’d rented the office specifically so he could look down at the Hog’s Breath courtyard with its long-legged tourists.