Move to Strike (28 page)

“A change? Well, he got older,” she said lightly, not liking the question, which Paul saw in the way she avoided it. “What are you getting at? If you’re thinking he had some neurological problems or something that caused him to make mistakes in his work, I have to tell you I think you are wrong. Bill was an accomplished surgeon always, and always in control.”

“Was there any change in your relationship?”

Beth shook her head.

“None?”

“I’m sorry, Paul, but I’m not used to sharing such personal matters with people. I’ve lost the habit.”

That made Paul wonder when she’d had the habit and when she’d lost it, because she didn’t give the impression that this was a recent change, one that had occurred due to her husband’s or son’s death.

“I guess I’d like to keep whatever shrouds—I mean shreds—of privacy I still have wrapped around me,” she said. “For myself, as well as for Bill.”

“My apologies,” Paul said. “I didn’t mean to add to your troubles today.”

“You’re just doing your job,” she said, “being thorough.”

She had that right, and unfortunately for her, it meant he could not let this meaty bone lie. “So, a couple of lawsuits . . . and an implication of changes . . . were you happy he was retiring?”

He caught it, the tiny tension in the way she held her cup. “I don’t follow,” she said. “I didn’t say anything about changes.”

No, but everything about her suggested otherwise. “Something to do with Chris?”

“Chris? Not at all. Chris never caused us any pain. He was an angel.”

“I don’t mean to attack Chris,” he said.

“You couldn’t, anyway,” Beth said. “I really believe Chris would eventually have come around to a medical career. He was a wonderful son.”

“Did Bill want him to be a surgeon?”

“Yes, but Chris had his own mind. He was still exploring. If he had gone that way, I know he would have made a wonderful doctor and helped so many people.”

She was openly grieving for Chris, but elusive about her husband. Maybe it was as simple as her being a very private person. He saw depths and surprises in Beth that he knew he’d have to explore. It didn’t hurt that she was a very pretty woman. Was he developing a thing about grieving young widows?

“Do you have anything new on the plane crash?” she asked.

“No evidence of anything but pilot error, according to the crash investigators.”

Beth nodded again, started to say something, then stopped.

“Nina and I feel there must be a link,” Paul said.

“Maybe we’ll never know,” Beth said. “I don’t even care what happened. All I want to know is that it happened fast. He saw a bright light, and then he was in a new place in a new phase of the life process.” It was an echo of what Connie Bailey had said about Skip.

“It happened fast,” Paul said. They were both silent.

Paul’s mind was still stuck on what might have happened to change Sykes a few years before. It hurt like a hangnail.

He said, “You’re in a position to know better than anyone. How did your husband feel about Nikki?”

There was a long silence. Then Beth said, “You’ve met her. She can be insufferable, and Bill never had any tolerance for that adolescent phase.”

Paul nodded. “What are you going to do now?”

“I suppose I’ll move to Los Angeles. Jan wants me to live with her. I might even help her in her business. I used to be in marketing.”

“That sounds positive,” Paul said, allowing a passing thought that Jan popped up suspiciously often in these investigations but unable to figure out how that was important at the moment.

“But before I leave,” Beth said, “I want to be sure Daria and Nikki are all right. I have to see this through with them. What happens next in the case?”

“A hearing’s coming up in less than three weeks. You should talk to Nina about it.”

“Paul?”

“Yeah.”

“Is Nikki going to be convicted? You must have some idea by now.”

“I don’t have any idea. None at all,” Paul said. “I wonder if you could do me a favor? I need to look at your phone bills for May.”

“Why?”

“Just part of the investigation.”

“Well, of course,” she said. She left him outside for a while, leaving him to fantasize about taking a dip in the aqua blue waters of the pool with her, and returning only after a significant amount of time had passed.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I can’t find any bills at all. I’ve been forgetting everything lately. I keep locking myself out of the house and forgetting to feed the cat.”

“You don’t keep your paid bills?”

“Of course. The police might have them. They took a lot from the house, I don’t know what all. Do you want me to check the receipt they gave me?”

He did. She went through a list and found that the police had taken the phone bills for the house’s two lines and just about every other record in the house. Nina was supposed to get copies. Paul made a note. They were at the front door again.

“By the way, did you know that your husband had bought Daria’s share of the mine?” Beth looked shocked, and he wondered why.

“Am I a suspect, Paul?” she said. “Your questions are so pointed, and your eyes—I don’t feel that you’re a kind person like I did before. No, I never knew until Daria told me after Bill’s death.”

Ignoring the many issues she had raised, Paul pressed on. “You must have gone to your grandfather’s claim many times.”

“Not for years. I had no interest at all in the claim. We all knew it was just tumbleweeds and rock.”

Paul paused. Beth looked very frail and alone as she leaned against her door, and he didn’t want to add to her burden of sorrow, but Nina wanted to know, so he had to ask. “Beth, Nina needs a straight answer from you on this question I’m about to ask you. For Nikki. The truth. You understand?”

“You’re scaring me. But—just ask, will you?”

“We need to know if Daria ever told you that she came here the night your husband died. Wait—don’t start protesting. Don’t be angry. Just answer, please.”

“Daria was here that night? Oh, no,” Beth said. “No, no, no.”

“Get in,” Nina snapped out the window as she skidded to a stop in front of the bus stop.

Nikki got in. “Guess you were watching me.”

“Seat belt.”

“I was going to. Look, I’ve only got fifteen minutes before I miss the curfew and explode or something.”

“What? They’ll put you back in jail!” Nina sped up quite a bit. They drove in silence. Nikki polished off the ice cream in a sugar cone she had bought at the mall as they took turns at top speed.

“Don’t you want to know what I was doing?” she asked finally.

“Tell me after we get you home.”

Shooting through intersections, racking up misdemeanors, they made it with seconds to spare. Nikki got out and ran for the house, where the phone was ringing. A few moments later she returned to the front porch, panting, her face rivuleted with dirt.

“They’re sure on the button,” she said. “They wanted to know why I didn’t come home right after my doctor’s appointment. Did you know they can tell exactly where you are?”

“No. I never had cause before to wonder,” Nina said. “But electronics are pretty sophisticated these days. What did you tell them?”

“Told ’em I got my period unexpectedly and I had to go over to the Raley’s at the Y for Tampax. They asked why I didn’t go somewhere closer, can you believe that? I said my mother had an account at the Raley’s and I had no money.” She looked just like Bob when he told a whopper. Her eyes shifted around and she opened them uncommonly wide in a childish effort to appear innocent, exposing her mendacious core.

“Which was all a pack of lies, right? You’re good at inventing things,” Nina said.

That shut her up momentarily.

“Did you go to Raley’s across from the movie theater?”

“I was hoping if they got an address, this place was close enough to pass. I did go right close to there, to the rock shop in the same strip mall.”

Nina sat down on the stoop and put her head in her hands. “If it’s not too much trouble,” she said, “maybe you could tell me why you took a huge risk that almost landed you in jail.”

“I wanted to ask the guy there about the rocks. About what they were worth. Obviously, I didn’t have any to show him,” she said hurriedly.

“Give me the backpack. Let’s see them.”

“I was going to give them to you as soon as I had them looked at.” Six more chunks of the incredible glistening rock fell into her hand.

“I’m really . . .” Nina began.

“You’re going to forget all about this when you hear what I found out,” Nikki interrupted.

“I doubt that. But go on.”

“The owner was there. His name is Digger. The name of the shop is Diggers. Shouldn’t that have an apostrophe?” she said thoughtfully. “Anyway, Digger said a guy came in who had some stones just like these a few weeks ago! So there!” She looked breathless with triumph.

“A few weeks ago? When?”

“I asked him but he couldn’t remember exactly.”

“Nikki, you shouldn’t have done it, any of it. But . . . I think you’ve learned something really helpful,” Nina said.

Nikki smiled broadly. She sat down next to Nina, and Nina got a look at her under the hair, her face streaked with dirt, dried blood under her nose.

“What’s that in your hair?” Nina asked. “You’re bleeding!”

“I tripped while I was running.”

The mama in her kicked in, and Nina forced the girl into the bathroom. There, she washed and poured disinfectant over the cut while Nikki yelped. Nina couldn’t help allowing a small tingle of satisfaction at her discomfort. Served her right for her general attitude. “It’s not too bad,” she said, “but that lump must be sore.”

“Duh,” said Nikki, reaching a tentative finger up to poke at the bandage.

After eliciting a firm promise from Nikki never, ever on pain of extreme measures, to fool around with the monitoring system again, Nina followed her into the kitchen. Nikki opened the refrigerator, which was as barren as a Martian crater, not even a carton of milk in there. Then she opened the cabinet. Some rice in a half-opened bag, some canned corn. Nikki put water in a pan and measured some rice into a cup, then started the stove. “Sorry,” she said. “Hunger attack.”

“This is all you have to eat at home?”

“Daria’s supposed to get paid for the magic show today.” Evidently Nikki didn’t know Daria had been fired.

“I’ll be back in five minutes,” Nina said. She went to the Safeway on Al Tahoe and brought back several sacks of groceries. Nikki was lounging on the porch like an old Appalachian lady when she came back. She took the bags in and started unpacking them.

“Wow,” she said. “Christmas.” She turned off the rice and made a thick turkey sandwich for herself. They went outside again and she began wolfing it down.

“Where is Daria?” Nina said. “She’s never here when I see you.”

“She auditions. She has afternoon quickies with guys in the band at the cocktail show. She hangs around the shows. She goes to Aunt Beth’s. She actually can’t stand the hovel,” Nikki said, her mouth full. “I can’t blame her.”

“But you’re too young—”

“You still don’t get it? She’s the one who’s too young.”

“This is something extra for food,” Nina said, handing her some cash.

“Forget it. I mean, thanks for the groceries. But I won’t take your money.”

“Don’t make me mad,” Nina said. “I’ll screw up your case if I spend all my time worrying about whether you’re eating enough.”

Her mouth still full of turkey, Nikki let Nina push the money into her pocket.

“Now,” Nina said. “Let’s talk about this man Digger remembers.”

“He’s a supplier who comes in now and then. His name is Dennis Rankin. He’s out working one of his claims,” Nikki said. “Gone for the next ten days.”

“Digger hasn’t seen the stones again?”

“Only that one time.”

“We need to talk to this character Rankin,” Nina said.

“Well, get ready. I know where he is. Digger told me where the claim is, not that he wanted to. He warned me off.” She shrugged. “Said you don’t want to get involved with this guy. Called him a wild man not fit for human company and a mean desert rat that’ll bite your head off before you say hello.”

“Sounds lovely. Where is his claim?”

Nikki finished the last of the sandwich and smiled again. “Right next to my Great Grandpa Logan’s claim. Got a map of Nevada? I’ll show you.”

PART FIVE

He’s in the dream and wants to wake up but when
he does he has this giant lizard inside him, and he
stumbles off the porch into the snow and tries to roll
it away, but it won’t go. It’s rapidly taking over and
he is growing scales and he feels his tailbone begin to
extend until there is a long beating thing behind
him.

He turns his head this way and that. He opens
his mouth and the tongue flicks out. He moves awkwardly toward the shelter of the forest. If he is surprised by an enemy, he will kill. If he is disturbed,
he will kill.

He is the lizard.

CHAPTER 22

COOL AIR DRIFTED over the mountains and leaked down over Shakespeare’s audience that June night, but the Reillys arrived prepared with jackets and warm snacks.

Sand Harbor, a unique area of the lake where large granite boulders lay strewn by glaciers, reminded the man sitting next to Nina of Virgin Gorda, an island in the Caribbean he had visited the summer before.

“Of course the boulders are smaller here,” he said, “but it’s the same effect. This is a place where a kid can dream up forts and pirate caves and secret hideaways.”

Behind the stage the lake glowed purple and the moon gleamed through the glaze of sunset like a spotlight in the sky.

Andrea had packed blankets. Cocooned together in pairs, Nina with Bob, Matt with Brianna, and Andrea with Troy, they stayed warm and enjoyed the performance and each other’s company.

As the faeries and mortals of a midsummer night cavorted on the stage, Nina allowed her gaze to roam over the lake and beyond, all the way to her husband, now asleep in a cold dark place, his life with her as swift as a shadow, short as any dream. He was truly gone, devoured by the jaws of darkness. These thoughts, which once would have strangled her pleasure in the moment, affected her differently now. Time had wound a soft cushion around her pain. Visions of him danced over her like the reflections on the water of the lake, changing the color of her skin but painlessly, without penetration. Now, remembering his gray eyes, his rare, terrific smile, his voice, she pulled her knees in close and hugged them tightly, to keep him with her as long as she could.

She realized that she was recovering from her grief and moving on. The realization made her a little sad, but she knew the time had come, not just for Bob’s sake but for her own.

She would need all her strength for this case, and even more to resist what felt like a yearning for Paul. She did not want to fall back into a relationship with him out of loneliness and weakness. Paul was a violent man, a strong arm, a dominator, as she had seen over the two years they had worked together. Their time together had been troubled, and they had broken up for all the right reasons. There were things she couldn’t understand about Paul, a philosophy she didn’t share. Still there was such a connection between them she could not imagine life without him. Despite the confusion of his presence, she was glad to have him to lean on again.

Shaking herself out of her reverie, she watched the stage again, half of her mind engaged, as it always was, on pressing problems. Daria and Dennis Rankin. The mysterious phone call to Bill Sykes on the night he died. The man in the back seat. The role of the opals. The plastic surgery patients.

Paul would be gone for the weekend, so she would work at home on the 995 motion. The desert would have to wait until Monday.

“All better,” the Carmel doctor said, giving Paul’s hairy leg a pat. “Now you do have to take it easy for a while.”

“Oh, I will,” Paul said, ever the good patient, at least for as long as it would take him to get out of the doctor’s office and back in the saddle.

“You need to build that leg up slowly . . .”

He and his nurse went on for quite a while. Paul tried to listen, but found himself admiring the nurse, thinking about Susan and Nina, and his two wives, along with other miscellaneous girlfriends. All these women, beautiful, mostly, great fun in bed, all. Some relationships that cut deep.

Susan wasn’t cutting deep. The night before had been a romp, and they both had had a good time. That was it.

Once again, because of Nina, he was in trouble. He’d gone back up to Tahoe supposedly because he needed the money, then blew most of it on a down payment for his new car. Stupid, stupid, stupid. A psychologist could have some fun with this pretense, and would rapidly conclude he had not gone up to Tahoe for the money at all, but had gone up to Tahoe vainly hoping for a resumption of relations between him and Nina. Nothing he did ever moved the pointed chin and piercing brown eyes very far from his mind.

Sitting there getting his cast off, he had to face it. He was still in love with her.

He had to get away from her for good. He had sacrificed any chance of her loving him, unless he lied and went on lying to her, and he didn’t think he could be close to her and keep up the lie forever. And if the truth was told, she would—what? Turn him in, maybe. Turn away from him forever, certainly.

As the doc shook his hand good-bye, he thought, after this case, I’m gone. He’d stay strictly away from her and away from Tahoe.

And Susan? Two days in a row was too much Susan. Susan bored him. Bored him stiff, he thought and had to smile, because that was exactly how the relationship had gone, good sex, no relationship. Tonight she wanted to make dinner for him, probably already had the greens out and washed and ready to go. He would call her and tell her it was over.

Forgetting everything the doctor said, he took a hard step forward and cursed. The nurse ordered a wheelchair and insisted he sit in it until they could dump him at the door.

The nurse hung over him. “Where’s your ride?” she asked, not about to let him just get up and walk away, although he was perfectly capable. She might even call the police on him if he tried to drive. Half-registered words had warned against it, earlier.

He got up. “Right here,” he said, pointing toward a Buick driven by an older man that was parked at the curb. He walked gingerly over, grabbed the door handle on the passenger side, and waved her off.

Whipping the wheelchair around, she turned away.

“Who the hell are you?” said the man. “Get your hands off that door or I’ll blow ’em off.”

“My mistake,” Paul said, backing away. He took his time getting to his car, then drove straight to what was left of his office in Carmel.

Same scene, getting musty. Deano hadn’t been back. Deano’s techno-industrial furniture wore a dusting of cigar ash here and there.

Paul descended carefully into his chair, which bore unfamiliar indentations from Dean’s ass. Okay, he needed a new chair anyway.

The mail had been coming through the slot for a long time unattended. He had to get up again and pick it up off the floor. He made a stack on his desk and looked at it for a while. The bills-to-checks ratio was about ten to one. Finally he picked up the phone.

“Ez? Don’t hang up.”

Good old Ez said, “Don’t bother me again. You are terminated long since.”

“So’s Deano,” Paul said. “He’s been spreading some mighty nasty rumors about me around town, trying to get my business away from me.”

“Like hell. Dean showed me the papers. I know all about you.”

Now they were getting somewhere. Ez was talking.

“So he showed you the papers?”

“The letter from your probation officer.”

Paul couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing.

“What’d I do?” he said. “Which crime was it?”

“I’d prefer not to talk about it.” Ez’s voice went down to a whisper. “I’m as liberal as the next guy, but . . . I never would have guessed . . . you seemed so . . . You go have that operation if you have to. Maybe that will calm you down, keep you out of trouble in public rest-rooms, but don’t expect me ever to call you Paula.”

Paul enjoyed the afternoon. Now that he knew what had happened, he made a few more calls.

Paula!

Good old Dean. He wasn’t quite finished with Deano yet.

Along with paying the down on the car, he had paid bills and sent money to the folks with the first good check from Nina. He was broke again, but the business was wobbling to its feet like a newborn calf.

Before he left, he called Deano’s Monterey number. A disconnect. He was thinking about whether to hunt him down like a dog through his investigator’s license when his eye fell on an emergency number Dean had once given him. Dean’s mother in Atascadero. He nodded slowly. And called the number.

“Hello?” An elderly lady.

“Mrs. Trumbo?”

“Yes?”

“This is Rod Stricker with the Internal Revenue Service.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I’m trying to locate a Dean Jay Trumbo.”

“Dean doesn’t live here.”

“You’re a relative?”

“Yes. No.”

“Do you know where Mr. Trumbo is?”

“I have no idea,” said Mrs. Trumbo stoutly.

“Well, we are trying to find Mr. Trumbo. We have sent a number of letters to his Carmel office and his apartment since he missed his audit appointment.”

“Oh, God!”

“We are going back to 1995, and there are serious problems. I mean, serious. If you have any contact with Mr. Trumbo in the future, would you please give him this audit number and tell him to come into our Los Angeles office to avoid further proceedings.”

“Yes, of course. What is the number?” He heard scrambling.

“ZXCVBNM3347,” Paul said.

“I can’t find a pen! What was that again?”

“ZSFJRTX3347.” He hung up. It really was sweet.

Late that night after tossing and turning for a few hours, Paul packed a duffel and got on the road for Tahoe. The empty gray highway soothed him in a way his bed could not. He liked going somewhere. Action in any direction was enough to silence those bothersome night goblins.

His first stop was the casino. He hit the tables with a furious, frantic energy, and because his leg ached and his mind felt uncommonly disgruntled, he hit the bottle of Louise’s red elixir a few more times than was probably judicious. He lost steadily, and it was only after he found himself tossing four-of-a-kind down without a bet that he realized the atmosphere had undergone a subtle metamorphosis. What started off as the usual night-owl crowd, pasty-faced and determined, was suddenly looking greener. He checked out the overhead lights, and sure enough, more green. Turning back to the dealer, he opened his mouth to comment on the strange cost-cutting measures of the casino, but shut it again as her scaly hair crawled wildly over her shoulders and down to the table, separated from her scalp and scampered over the table, now changed into small, mean lizards, red tongues flicking at the flying cards.

Holy shit, he thought, feeling bubbles of laughter bursting inside. Didn’t something like this happen to Hunter Thompson in Vegas?

As he turned to remark upon it to the man seated next to him, he stopped himself with a fist to his mouth, stifling what would have been a startled shout. The man’s face was swelling—his eyes rolled over into opaque marbles, his teeth grew spear sharp, and from beneath his white T-shirt, like a dinosaur hatching from an egg, a tail began to emerge, glinting in the turmoil of green light that now shined down in distinct beams, alien light on a reptilian hell . . .

The whole thing was so damned funny! He nearly busted a gut laughing, until the pit boss stood him up and firmly but gently steered him out of the room, inviting him to leave.

Ducking the man’s bulging eyes, which were making a beeline across the heads of the patrons toward him, Paul staggered to the nearest rest room giggling hysterically, and, not entirely without regret, forced himself to upchuck. Pulling himself to the sink a few minutes later, he was afraid to look in the mirror, but he did, and what he saw did not surprise him. A sweating man. A grinning, gibbering idiot.

Sitting on a stool, door closed, he gave himself a long time to recover, unhappily monitoring the nocturnal comings and goings of his fellow gamblers. Coming out later, he rinsed his face, entered the casino gingerly, and found things restored to the more usual bright lights and pleasant amusements.

Cursing himself, he headed straight out to his car and drove to Nina’s house on Kulow. One light knock and Bob answered the door.

“It’s Sunday morning,” Bob said, squinting into the darkness to see. “And really early, isn’t it?” In spite of the hour, he looked combed and unrumpled.

“Right,” Paul said. “Sorry. Your mom home?”

“She’s sleeping.” He bent down to pet Hitchcock. “She worked late writing a motion.”

“Any idea when she’ll get up?”

“Not really. But you can come in and wait.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll make coffee,” Bob said dubiously, leading the way toward the table. Around a cardboard cereal box, small o’s were arranged into an elaborately layered rectangle. An empty milk container lay on its side nearby.

“That’s okay,” Paul said. “Allow me.” He opened cupboards until he lined up Nina’s equipment, asking, “You want some?”

Bob’s eyes opened ever so slightly. “Sure,” he said, voice casual.

After measuring the coffee with a tablespoon, Paul sprinkled it into the filter basket, loving the smell of hot water soaking through ground beans. He searched farther to come up with sugar. Ladling some into Bob’s cup along with some half-and-half he found in the refrigerator, he said, “You’ve been up a while.”

Bob nodded.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

He shook his head.

“Neither could I,” said Paul. “Nightmares. Things that go bump in the night.” He laughed, and after a minute, Bob contributed his own dry chuckle to the thought.

“Me too,” he said.

With his back turned, Paul added instant chocolate to Bob’s cup along with a dab of coffee. He handed it over. Bob took a tentative sip, then another. “Mmm,” he said, surprised. “I didn’t know coffee was so good.”

“Secret recipe,” said Paul.

They drank their coffee in companionable peace for a few minutes while the dark outside paled toward morning.

“What’s your nightmare?” Bob asked. “You don’t have to tell me but . . . do you have one that really scares you, the same one over and over?”

“My nightmare,” Paul said, thinking. “I turn into a lizard.”

“Sounds funny.”

“Trust me, it isn’t.”

“I didn’t know adults had bad dreams like that.”

“We do.”

Bob put a finger in the bottom of his cup and came up with sticky black goo, which he licked. “In my dream,” he said, “there’s someone trying to get into the house. Someone who wants to kill me and kill my mom. I know he’s out there, out in the woods. I can hear him, but I can’t see him. I hunt for him and I feel like he’s right behind me all the time. He’s got a knife. I can hear him getting closer. I get scared, really scared, and I try to shout but nothing comes out. He gets closer . . . and then I wake up and it’s like I died or something, I feel so bad.”