Reilly 13 - Dreams of the Dead (5 page)

“Still got a thing for you.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Nina sucked down what was left in her wineglass, gulped some water, and took a bite of her egg roll. “I’m trying to make it work with Kurt right now. Paul understands that.”

“But,” Sandy said, then sucked down the rest of her tea, “no contact for months.”

“I don’t know why guys get that way, Sandy. It’s never made any sense to me how they cut you off when things change. They seem to need to go cold and quiet. I’d love to see him.”

“Really.”

“Of course.”

“Why not stay in contact?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“And there’s Kurt to think about.”

Nina looked out the window at the happy people moseying along the sidewalk. “You’re right. Paul understands. He stays away because that’s appropriate. I’m with Kurt. I guess I actually don’t like it when people do that, stay in touch with old lovers, like, if things don’t work out, they’ve got an alternative lined up.”

“Well, you picked Kurt over Paul.”

“I did.”

“Kurt’s your son’s father, I get that,” Sandy said. “Aside from that, I wish I knew why you stick it out.”

The doors to the restaurant opened, letting in a frigid blast of air, but the doors shut and nobody came inside. Nina shivered. “I only want to do my job, make some money, raise my son, and find someone to love. Why’s that so hard?”

“Yeah, why is it?” Sandy said, her standard impassivity restored. “I think you should get a horse.”

“What?”

“Get outside. Do some riding. Do something normal on the weekend besides working.”

Nina left some money on the table and pushed her chair back.

“Nix on the horse,” she said.

“You go ahead.” Sandy scraped up the last of her chicken, steady and deliberate as always. “Don’t worry. I’ll get the receipt.”

T
hat afternoon in Nina’s office, the young burglar took the news that his case was going to be reduced to a misdemeanor with aplomb. “Time served?” he said.

“That’ll be the recommendation, along with three years of probation. But, Josh, listen, okay? You need to pay attention.”

He raised his eyebrows as if attending, but his eyes were glued to his smartphone.

“You’ll go to prison if you do it again.”

“You mean, if I’m caught.” He was nineteen, with a shaven head and blue tattoos covering his left arm. His lost eyes, when they finally looked up, bothered Nina. His crying mother had paid his legal fee. Like many young petty criminals, he thought he’d just had a spell of bad luck, when what he had had was a foreshadowing.

Nina handed him an appointment card. “Nine a.m., tomorrow. Be there. Do not under any circumstances get in any trouble before then.”

He grinned at her, stroking ornately carved facial hair, then got up and said with a formality that astonished her, “May I ask you a personal question?”

“What?”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-eight.”

Her youthful burglar looked her in the eye and said, “I hope when I’m that age, my wife looks just like you.”

Half her age, he almost had her fluffing her hair. “See you tomorrow.”

B
efore leaving for the day, Nina read the paperwork on the Paradise Ski Resort sale again. She called Lynda Eckhardt. She called the state bar ethics hotline to see if she’d have some sort of conflict
of interest, considering that two years before Jim Strong had been her client. The answer was no. This was an entirely different legal matter.

She called the South Lake Tahoe police station and talked again to her buddy Sergeant Fred Cheney, then had Sandy make copies of all the legal paperwork and deliver it to him.

She called Michael Stamp’s office to say that she would be stepping in.

Nina did some online research. In the library, which with its long table doubled as her conference room, she looked up the law on special appearances, in which a party in a lawsuit either didn’t appear personally at all or appeared only for a limited purpose.

The law was vague on the question of whether Strong could carry on his litigation from Brazil. Other legal issues stemmed from Jim’s status as a missing person and from how to handle his share of the sales proceeds. Was there a chance she could convince Judge Flaherty that Jim was dead? Probably not, not until they had dealt with the bombshell affidavit.

Jim couldn’t be alive. She had it on good authority that he was not.

B
efore she left for home, Paul van Wagoner called her back. “Remember me?”

“Who’s calling, please?”

“Why, you naughty, naughty girl.”

“Paul, I’m so happy to hear your voice.” Nina felt an automatic lift just talking with him again. He knew her better than anyone else and forgave her for what he knew.

“Got your message, sweet cheeks.”

“What have you been up to?”

“Played hooky today and went for a hike at Big Sur.”

“With Susan?”

“Susan?” He said it as if he needed to think in order to remember the name, although Nina knew better. He had known her for years. According to gossip, Susan wanted marriage and had agitated hard.
Nina felt uneasy about how relieved she had been when she heard through the Monterey grapevine that Paul didn’t jump at the chance.

“I went alone,” he said finally. “We’re over.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Nina lied. She had no rights over him. Still, Paul swam into sharper focus with this pronouncement.

“She moved to San Francisco. That’s a long way.”

Nina herself was over 250 miles from Carmel, and yet they had managed, at one time. In spite of months of silence, they always picked up in a happy place, when they picked up.

“Somewhere along the line we stopped caring a whole lot.”

“No need to offer details.”

“Ah, but if I don’t, you don’t have to give me details about you and Kurt.”

“Paul, I didn’t call about—”

“Please don’t say you’re getting married again and I’m not invited.”

“Philip Strong came to my office. He believes Jim Strong is alive.” She listened to Paul’s breath catch over the line and remembered how it smelled like cloves sometimes, or peppermint.

“Now, why would he believe that?”

She explained about the affidavit.

“From Brazil? It’s a con.”

She imagined Paul in his office, feet up on the polished desk, looking out the window at the attractive patrons below. Paul had a prosperous practice as a private investigator in Carmel, California, where he had found an office in a building that overlooked Clint Eastwood’s old restaurant and bar, the Hog’s Breath Inn.

“I won’t discuss Jim Strong with you. You know that.”

“I have been over this in my mind, Paul, and I’ve developed this awful suspicion that Jim’s alive. Maybe you lied. You let me think he was dead.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I have a right to know the truth. I thought I did for these past few years and now I need reassurance.”

“I never lied to you, Nina.”

She heard heat in his voice, but was it the heat of truth or the heat of deception? “You have to know how this affects me and Bob.”

“Look. I’ll come up to Tahoe tonight. Stay at Harrah’s. See you in the morning. Been meaning to do some gambling anyway. My jar’s full of quarters and my fingers ache for cards.”

“Why not tell me now?”

“All in good time.”

“What about your work?”

“Just finished a big job. Wish is banging things out and I can leave for a day or two. Hire me. What do you say? We’ll deal with this, get it over with, hit the beach, and let the sun work its magic.”

“Philip already has a PI,” Nina told him. “I told him I’d take the case, Paul, but I may not be able to bring you in.”

“Take it. Let’s see what’s up.”

They had been lovers and they had been friends, and they had done things together that gave her night frights. “Probably it wasn’t a good idea.”

“Philip’s PI won’t be as good as I am.”

“Not up to me.”

“I don’t know what’s going on yet, but we’ll find out. There’s money in the pot somebody wants, and it ain’t Jimmy. Listen. I’ll be by in the morning. You got court?”

“Short stuff.”

“Good.”

The intercom buzzed. “Sandy wants me,” Nina said.

“Well, then, hustle. Never ignore the boss. See you tomorrow. Can’t wait. There’s ass waiting to be kicked up there.”

N
ina drove home with much on her mind. With law, a great deal of thinking went on between three and five in the morning, and Jim Strong had instantly become both a personal and professional awakener. Sometimes jogging a few blocks around the neighborhood with her dog, Hitchcock, helped her sleep better, but the slushy spring roads lately had made that risky.

Oh, hell, she wasn’t going to sleep much no matter what.

News nattered on the radio and she listened to the local report: snow showers tonight, a high of fifty, clear weather tomorrow. Tahoe’s dry climate had plenty of sunny early-spring days. If only Jim Strong hadn’t bobbed up like a jack-in-the-box, she might be thinking about the weekend and her new skis.

At least Paul was coming. Maybe he would take over and figure it all out. How to feel about Paul? She plonked him on a dusty mental shelf with all her other past indiscretions, knowing he would instantly jump off. He had a way of crawling into her heart whether she invited him or not.

She turned onto Jicarilla off Pioneer Trail and, after a few more twists in the forested streets full of cabins, went down Kulow Street and turned into the slick downhill driveway.

These days she drove a sensible RAV4, a compact SUV that never broke down and had enough cargo space for trips to the lumberyard and the dump.

Bob and Hitchcock must be out for a walk, though it was already dark. The cabin emitted a warm, damp smell. Bob had turned on the lights in the big room and even tossed a Duraflame log into the orange Swedish fire stove. She sat down on the couch to pull her leather boots off, then went to the kitchen to check her messages and pour her nightly glass of Clos du Bois.

Blinking.

“Hi,” Kurt’s voice said. “Can I come over tonight? We need to talk.” The world is a cliché, Nina thought, as she refreshed her glass.

After a long sip, she called back and got Kurt’s message phone. “How about eight? But I have to get to bed early.”

S
he had noticed that when Kurt’s latest temporary job had dried up, he began staying up late and got up later. This disrupted their relationship, since she began to yawn by 9:00 p.m. most nights.

In her small, cozy kitchen she boiled water for spaghetti, clicking on the television news, watching with one eye on it, one on the food. A bear had been sighted wandering down Golden Bear Street. Made sense in an ursine way. She felt a small pang of worry about Bob and Hitchcock. She would have to equip Bob with pepper spray and teach him how to use it; he took the dog onto all kinds of trails, and the bears had lately come to view South Lake Tahoe as their neighborhood Safeway. The big animals were supposed to be hibernating but with food available year-round, their ancient habits had shifted. They broke windows and garage doors and came into people’s houses, ransacking fridges and pantries and scaring everyone.

She dumped tomato sauce into her potion of ground beef, onions, garlic, and peppers, turned the heat down, and stretched out on the couch for a moment of peace.

The front door flew open. Bob said, “Mom?”

“Shoes off!” she called. “Wipe Hitch’s feet!” Too late—the big, mostly black malamute bounded to her and propped both
his muddy, wet paws onto her leg. She gave up, petted his coarse fur, chatted with Bob for a minute, then went back to her kitchen duties while Bob changed the station to a show about affluent kids who lived in a Neverland where snow never fell and teens never got acne.

At dinner Bob, age fifteen and on the edge of some sort of revolution, said, “I have a test in Spanish class tomorrow. I’m going to blow it.”

“Why? You have tonight to study.”

“It’s too hard.”

“You’ve talked to your teacher?”

“He despises me. He plots my death.”

“Bob, have you been acting up in class?” Bob seemed to develop a new annoying mannerism every day, from foot-tapping to humming to restless shifting around that Nina only had to look at at mealtimes, but the teacher had to watch day after day for an hour straight.

Bob got up. “How come you always blame me? I’m trying to get through without dying of boredom. Mr. Acevedo doesn’t like me and I don’t like Spanish.” Bob pulled out his cell, read it, and began texting. “It’s Kurt. He says he’s coming over.”

Bob hadn’t met Kurt until he was twelve years old, and it had seemed too late to all of them for Kurt to be called Dad. Bob and Kurt had taken to each other like puzzle pieces finally slotted together correctly. Nina found some aspects of their reunion almost uncanny, as if Bob had been somewhat of a mystery that suddenly resolved. Their coloring, their volatility, their musical talent; they were very alike.

They loved each other now, that was the main thing. “You have to study, so say hi and disappear upstairs while we visit.”

“Don Quixote de la buncha crap,” Bob said. “Got it.”

“Go to work, now, kiddo.”

He whined and complained for another minute.

“Fine, your choice. No B average, no piano until you bring your
grade up.” Bob loved playing his old stand-up piano so much that Nina occasionally used deprivation of piano time as a punishment. As a result, Bob considered the piano a luxury and pleasure. She drained pasta into a bowl and added the sauce, hoping it would pick up heat from the noodles.

Bob’s future swam into view: a musical career of some sort. He often played late into the night after Nina went to her room. Looking at his lips, set in a teenage snarl, she allowed herself to hope he could make a living from music because a college degree would never hang on this boy’s wall.

“How the hell would you know if I have a B average right this minute or not?”

“Don’t swear, Bob. Do you?”