Move to Strike (22 page)

Nina drove Paul back to his car, not saying a word to Bob, who slouched in the back seat.

“What’s with you and Daria?” Paul asked. “You were shooting daggers at her.”

“I was?” Nina said, surprised. “I didn’t know it showed.”

“Well?”

“I need to clear something up with her.”

“And you don’t want to talk about that now.”

“No. But, Paul, I do want to say I’m glad you were there,” she said. “Bob said if you and Daria hadn’t been there . . . You’re better on crutches than . . . I’m sorry I doubted it.”

“No problemo,” Paul said. He started up the car, allowing himself the first small, safe moan of pain as he watched Nina’s door close.

He hoped he could make it to the ER at the hospital before the screaming started.

After fighting the impulse to no avail, Nina again made a circuit of the house with Hitchcock, this time touching Bob’s face to assure herself that it was he and not some camouflage body breathing so regularly in his bed.

Troubled by the thought that tonight she had tripped over the biggest lie she could remember him telling, and wondering if it was the biggest lie or just the biggest one she had caught him at, she tossed in her bed, disturbing Hitchcock on his rug by the bed, who then decided to scratch at the door.

Two in the morning. She let him out. She was up anyway. She punched in Nikki’s number.

Nikki answered, sounding wide awake. “Is Bob okay?”

“He’s sleeping,” Nina said. “And now I want you to tell me what it is he was digging up for you out there.”

“Did he tell you?”

“No.”

“Nothing.”

“Nikki, listen carefully. If you don’t tell me right now, I’m off this case. Go find yourself another lawyer.”

“Isn’t that unethical or something?” said Nikki, outraged.

“So sue me. You put my son in danger. I want to know why, and I want to know right now.”

“Okay. I was going to tell you tomorrow. Only it’s nothing. You’ll see. Just a buncha nothing.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Yeah, I don’t get it either. I mean why would my uncle bother to hide something worthless in such a slammin’ good place?”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“I’ll try to fit you in,” Nikki said.

CHAPTER 16

NINA WENT OVER to Nikki’s at nine A.M.

The weather had turned. As she drove along the lake, black clouds scudded over the mountains, making for the basin. A couple of canoes battled their way into shore. The tops of the trees tossed and swayed, blurring to gray in the mist. As she turned toward Nikki’s house a powerful wind buffeted the heavy Bronco. She kept her hands firmly on the wheel, correcting its sway.

Her client answered the door, dressed in a black T–shirt that hung down to her knees. As usual, the curtains were drawn tight over the front windows, blocking out all natural light in the living room. The place was so shabby and cold that Nina wondered if she had done the right thing requesting the home supervision. Anyone would be depressed being locked up here.

In a corner a Macintosh computer monitor showed some windows, and Nikki coughed violently, as if the blast of fresh air through the opened door had shocked a system grown accustomed only to the musty indoors.

Before closing the door, she looked up and down the street.

“There’s nobody,” Nina said.

“Of course there isn’t,” she said, pulling the door shut and locking it behind her. She led Nina through the living room and into the kitchen.

Dark paneled cupboards inside and trees outside blocked most of the light that might have had a chance to squeeze through the window above the sink. The main illumination was provided by a dim bulb shaded by a fake Tiffany glass shade. They sat down at a small breakfast nook in a dark corner of the room. Nina said, “Where’s your mom today?”

“Aunt Beth called. She’s not handling things very well. Daria went over to calm her down.” Nikki felt around in the pocket of a loose sweatshirt she wore open over her long T.

Nina had hoped to see Daria but was coming to the conclusion that she would just have to chase her down, because she was never around.

“It’s here somewhere,” Nikki said.

“It better be,” said Nina without thinking.

She got a glare in return. Nikki slapped a velvet bag onto the table and folded her arms. “That’s it. Uncle Bill’s big bad treasure. I took it from his house the night he was murdered and buried it in the woods. Then I couldn’t get back out to dig them up, so I asked Bob for help. Bob got the bag and slipped it to me last night.”

“What’s inside?”

“Open it.”

Nina opened the drawstrings and dumped the contents of the bag out onto a piece of newspaper.

“See what I mean?” Nikki said. “Freakin’ rocks!”

It did indeed appear to be so. In a small pile of plain dirt about a dozen small chunks of rock had scattered. Nina picked one up. Black rock. Disappointment didn’t begin to describe her reaction. “But what is this?”

“I’ll tell you what I hoped. I hoped it was like silver or gold ore. You know how in the old days, people mined for gold and silver up in Nevada? And we owned this land . . .”

“I heard about the land. Your mother sold it to your uncle.”

“That’s bull. He conned it out of her! Anyway, it was my Grandpa Logan’s and before that, it was his dad’s. My grandpa mined it out a long time ago, or so they said, so, when I first saw these rocks, I thought maybe they had silver in them and that was why Uncle Bill . . .” She frowned. “Well, you know. But they’re just . . . rocks! I showed them to Daria last night right here where we’re sitting. We rubbed some of them to expose that black stuff that looks glassy. She actually knows a little about silver and gold ore. She says it isn’t the right kind of rock. It looks like petrified wood or something, except for how dark it is.”

The scenario Nikki had invented was falling apart. No treasure meant no con. Then she had gone to her uncle’s house for nothing, and her uncle hadn’t conned anybody.

How painful it must be for Nikki, realizing all her trouble had come out of a fool’s errand. She seemed to be waiting for Nina to belabor the point in standard adult fashion but Nina didn’t see any need to add to her misery.

Turning the largest stone over in her hand, Nina noted that the surface was brittle. Flakes came off readily in her hand, although the stone beneath remained intact. “Let’s move into the light,” she suggested. They did, but the lighting in the house was dim at best and a dark overhang of sky outside did not help matters.

“See here.” Nikki pointed at a place in the stone where the gray outside had fallen away to reveal glossy black. “Obsidian, maybe? I tried looking it up on the Web.”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s not very valuable, obsidian, unless maybe you’re a Native American a couple hundred years ago making arrowheads.”

“No, I guess not, although we’ll ask someone more knowledgeable about that.” In the poor light, she couldn’t see much, just the kind of thing Bob stuffed his pockets with when he was little, something with a little visual interest in the reflective sheen that peeked out of the rubble here and there, but nothing particularly exotic otherwise.

“It’s just junk,” Nikki said. She began collecting the rocks and putting them back into the fabric pouch.

“But why would he go to so much trouble to hide rocks?” Nina asked. “That’s a really unusual hiding place.”

Nikki shrugged. “I was sure they’d be something special, too, that’s why I had Bob dig them up. Thought I must have missed something the first time I looked at them.”

“But the man who chased Bob—he thought they were valuable.”

“He was just guessing, like me. The newspaper article on the hearing said that neighbor saw me take something. Junk is what I took. I’m such a loser. I ruined everything going over there. I caused the whole— it’s all over. I might as well . . .”

“Do you think you caused the whole thing?” Nina said.

“I didn’t say that! Don’t try to get me mixed up!”

“You might as well what?”

“Nothing. Don’t cross-examine me, I’m not in the mood.”

“Listen to me,” Nina said. “We are in the middle of a process, Nikki, a hard process for you, unbearable sometimes. I know you feel scared and alone, but you’re not alone. Besides your mother and aunt, you have me. I’m with you.” She took Nikki’s hand and looked intently into the girl’s eyes. “You’re going to have to start trusting me, or this will crush you.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Don’t give up hope. Let me help you through this. All right?”

“Okay,” Nikki said in a small voice.

“Promise me you won’t do anything to harm yourself.”

“I’ll stick around for the bitter end.”

“Good girl.” Nina got up to leave. “You’d better give those to me.”

Nikki was looking down at the floor. “I just wanted a fair price for the land,” she said, “so we could pay the landlord and not have to live in the car or a tent. Daria spends money we don’t have. She brought home the guitar and the amp. I can’t imagine how she got that credit card. I came home one day and she had her boyfriend of the moment installing the computer in the back room. She wouldn’t let me take it back. But the fact is, we can’t make the payments, so it is going back, and so’s my guitar, and it won’t be long. The collection agencies call to threaten us every day.”

“You had all that wrapped up in these little rocks?” Nina said gently.

No answer.

“Does your mother use the computer?”

“She can’t even turn it on.”

“So she bought it for you. And the guitar?”

“Yeah. For me. Without them, I wouldn’t be— have, I mean—anything going on.”

“It’s complicated,” Nina said.

“It sure is.”

“That guitar looks to me like somebody’s dream.”

“Yeah. I want to be in a band. I’ve been writing songs and practicing a lot. Daria never complains, even late at night, just says, ‘Follow your passion and everything else will follow.’ Life’s so easy for someone like her, just full of lucky charms and prayers that get answered. I wish it were that easy for me,” Nikki went on, handing Nina the pouch. Childlike, she had moved to a new mood. “When do I get this thing off my ankle, anyway?” she asked. “It’s a pain when I shower.”

“After the trial, Nikki. Or sooner, if we win the next hearing.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s called a 995 hearing, after the Penal Code section that describes it.”

“When is that going to happen?”

“I’m thinking mid-July. I’ll let you know as soon as the papers are filed.”

“After we win my case,” Nikki said, “I might leave Tahoe. Maybe go to the desert or maybe a big city.”

They both looked at the bag on the table.

“Did your mother decide to call the police about last night?” Nina asked.

“Sure. Made sure they got a good look at Grandpa’s unregistered, unlicensed firearm, oh, and of course rushed to tell them all about how it was shot recently. And pointed out the trail of blood out there in the woods to make ’em really jump for joy.”

The trail of blood was an exaggeration. There had been some blood but Paul said the man might have cut himself on rough bark. “I see,” Nina said.

“I’m like my father,” Nikki said suddenly, and Nina felt the lurch as the girl took an awkward step toward her. She hardly breathed, waiting for her to come closer.

“After we win,” Nikki repeated, and this time, Nina heard the hope embodied in the repetition, “I’ll be in a band, too. He’s a rocker like Steve Tyler. I have a tape of his music he gave to everybody one Christmas, and he’s really good. He played in the house band at Harrah’s here and in Vegas and all over. Maybe I’ll see him on TV one day.” She flung her hair forward onto her cheeks and hid behind the cascade of brown hair.

As she walked out the front door to her car, Nina stashed the bag in her jacket pocket. Once in the car, deciding rocks in her pocket would rapidly demote her new powder blue jacket to cheap-looking rag, she moved the bag into the so-called secret compartment hidden in the armrest between the driver’s and passenger’s seats and set off.

Of course, given the deserted neighborhood and deserted street, the one car for miles would start up immediately behind her. Looking for a place to pull over and let the roadhog hog on ahead, she slowed at the corner. The pickup pulled swiftly in front of her and came to a dead stop.

Stalled, probably, she thought, frustrated. She looked at her watch. She had an appointment in ten minutes. She unrolled the driver’s side window and looked out, then gave a brief honk. When no engine started up and no one emerged from the truck after a minute, she tried to make it around, but the street proved too narrow.

Suspicion and fear rose up in her. She hadn’t seen the pickup when she went in. She threw the gears into reverse, ready to haul out, then thought about Nikki alone in the house. She didn’t want to leave her with a potential threat. So she reached for the hammer she kept under the seat with other important items, cautiously opened the door, and approached the silent vehicle from a safe distance, ready to run.

But it was empty. She walked around the front to make sure. Now she was very suspicious. Where had the driver gone? She put a hand up to shade the tinted window in the rear, but could see nothing inside except a clutter of clothing and tools.

Returning to the Bronco, she called Nikki. “Lock your doors,” she said. “I’m about a block away, and there’s an empty pickup blocking the road here that I don’t like the looks of.”

The driver seemed to have abandoned his wheels. He could be watching from the forest along the road. Nina put the Bronco in reverse and wound her way up another side road and away.

Rain splattered onto the window. She slowed down, cruising slowly through an area of National Forest that would eventually open out to the highway.

She was almost to Al Tahoe when she looked into the driver’s mirror and saw the corner of a denim sleeve in the back seat.

The sleeve was moving, and before she could breathe, an arm clamped around her neck. “Keep driving,” a man said. “You and I have some business.”

Was it Him?

She drove because she had no choice and because her hands were on the wheel and her foot was on the accelerator. She let the adrenaline pump through her body, urging her to get away.

She didn’t dare look in her rearview mirror, although the temptation was unbearable, but if she saw Him there what then? She might die of fear . . .

Not a good day to die.

She slammed on the brakes and the Bronco jerked into a skid. The arm loosed, pulling back from around her neck, and she felt a heavy body slam into the back of her seat as she herself was thrown forward into the seat belt. Holding tightly to the wheel, she ducked her head and steered straight for a gully full of water. The Bronco stopped cold.

She yanked the steel buckle of the seat belt and tumbled out of the driver’s side. Scrambling to her feet, she ran across the empty slick road toward a driveway.

She heard a car door slam and despite herself turned her head back for one frantic look.

He had fallen out of the back door into the gully and her view was blocked by the Bronco, but she heard him grunt as he hit. She went down into a crouch behind a boulder guarding the driveway and saw feet in brown boots and heard splashing, then saw a figure rush into the woods across from her.

Silence. A duck quacked somewhere. A few last drops of rain fell on her forehead.

He was gone. Trembling, she walked back across the street to the Bronco, searching the back seat and the cargo area. Nothing that wasn’t hers, but he had been hiding in the back seat as she drove, preparing to do— what? Her hammer lay ready on the front passenger seat, along with her purse. She jumped back into the driver’s seat and locked the doors and rolled up the windows and sat huddled and shivering. After a moment, when her ability to move had returned, she gunned the Bronco out of there and drove like hell to the office.

Had it been him? Not the man who had chased Bob, but Him—the one who seemed always to be roaming around just at the edge of consciousness, not satisfied with having killed her husband, wanting to hurt her or Bob. Her personal devil, who everyone from the police on down said had cut and run many months ago, who never did the expected. He had assumed an almost supernatural aspect in her mind. She felt that he had linked himself to her and that he would be irresistibly drawn back. A devil!