Solitude Creek (40 page)

The applause began, loud and genuine. Dance knew the audience was considering a standing ovation, but since there’d been none earlier, there could be none now. Not that it mattered, Dance could see that Maggie was ecstatic. She beamed and curtseyed, a maneuver she’d practiced almost as much as the song.

Dance blew her daughter a kiss. She set her head against Boling as he hugged her.

Wes said, ‘Wow. Jackie Evancho.’

Not quite. But Dance decided definitely to add voice to the violin lessons this year. She exhaled a laugh.

‘What?’ Edie Dance asked her daughter.

‘Just she did a good job.’

‘She did.’

Dance didn’t tell her mother that the laugh wasn’t prompted by Maggie’s performance but from the discussion in the green room a half-hour earlier.

‘
Honey?
’

‘
It’s terrible.
’

When the tears had stopped, Dance had told Maggie, ‘I know what’s going on, Mags. About the club.’

‘Club?’

Dance had explained she knew about the Secrets Club and their extortion.

Maggie had looked at her as if her mother had just said that Monterey Bay was filled with chocolate milk. ‘Mom, like, no. Bethany’s neat, no, she wouldn’t do anything like that. I mean, sometimes she’s all, I’m the leader, blah, blah, and everything. But that’s okay. We voted her president.’

‘What did she say when she called this morning? You were upset.’

She’d hesitated.

‘Tell me, Mags.’

‘I’d told her you said I didn’t have to sing but she said she’d talked to everybody in the club and they really, really wanted me to. I mean, everybody.’

‘Sing “Let It Go”?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, I mean, they were saying I was sort of the star of the club. They thought I was so good. They don’t have a lot of things they can do, most of the girls. I mean, Leigh does batons. But Bethany and Carrie? You saw them try to do that scene from
Kung Fu Panda
?’

‘It was pretty bad.’

‘Uh-huh. I’m the only musical one. And they said nobody wants to hear a stupid violin thing. And they were like the club would look really bad if one of us didn’t do something awesome at the show.’

‘So they weren’t going to expose your secret or anything?’

‘They wouldn’t do that.’

‘Can you tell me yours?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Please. I won’t tell a soul.’

There’d been a moment’s pause. Maggie’d looked around. ‘I guess. You won’t tell anybody?’

‘Promise.’

Whispering: ‘I don’t like Justin Bieber. He’s not cute and I don’t like what he does onstage.’

Dance had waited. Then: ‘That’s it? That’s your secret?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then why don’t you want to sing, honey?’

Her eyes had clouded with tears again. ‘Because I’m afraid this terrible thing’s going to happen. It’ll be, you know, the worst. I’ll be up there in front of everybody.’

‘What?’

‘You know you were telling me about our bodies and when you get older things happen?’

My God, she was worried she’d get her period onstage. Dance was about to bring up the subject when Maggie said, ‘Billy Truesdale.’

‘Billy. He’s in your class, right?’

A nod. ‘He’s my age.’

Dance recalled their birthdays were about the same time of year. She took out a tissue and dried her daughter’s eyes.

‘What about him?’

‘Okay,’ Maggie had said, sniffling. ‘He was singing last month, in assembly. He was really good and he was singing the national anthem. But then … but then when he sang a high note, something happened, and his voice got all weird and it like cracked. And he couldn’t sing any more. Everybody laughed at him. He ran out of the auditorium, crying. And afterward I heard somebody say it was because of his age. His voice was changing.’ She choked. ‘I’m like the
same
age. It’s going to happen to me. I know it. I’ll go out onstage – and you know that note in the song, the high note? I know it’ll happen!’

Dance had clamped her teeth together and inhaled hard through her nose to keep the smile from blossoming on her face. And she’d reflected on one of the basic aspects of parenting: you think you’ve figured out every possible permutation and plan accordingly and you still get slammed from out of the blue.

Dance had wiped Maggie’s tears once again, then hugged her daughter. ‘Mags, there’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

Dance awoke early and surveyed the aftermath of the Secrets Club pajama party, which she’d hosted after the show.

The living room was not bad for a gaggle of ten- and eleven-year-old girls. Pizza crusts on most of the tables, popcorn on the floor, glitter from who knew what makeup experiment, some nail polish where it shouldn’t be, clothes scattered everywhere from an impromptu fashion show.

Could’ve been a lot worse.

Arriving at the house last night, Maggie had been pure celeb, red-carpet celeb. Whatever other clubs were part of the social structure of Pacific Hills, the Secrets Sisters ruled.

And, Dance had been pleased to learn (one of the reasons for the pizza and pajama party at her place), the girls were all quite nice. Yes, Bethany would probably someday be an inside-the-Beltway force whom no one would want to argue with from across the aisle. Heaven help Leigh’s husband. And Carrie could write code that impressed even Jon Boling. But the girls were uniformly polite, generous, funny.

Edie Dance had stayed the night too and would cater the breakfast – making her daughter’s signature hybrids: panfles or wafcakes – then get the girls ready for pickup by their parents. Because of the show last night, the school had a delayed opening today.

Now, dressed for work, Dance said, ‘Thanks, Mom.’ She hugged her. ‘Don’t you dare clean up. I’ll do that when I’m home.’

‘Bye, dear.’

As Dance was heading for the door, Bethany appeared, wearing Hello Kitty PJs. There was definitely an insidious aspect to the cartoon feline, Dance had decided long ago.

‘Yes, Bethany?’

‘Mrs Dance, I have something to talk to you about.’ Dead serious.

Dance turned to her and nodded, concentrating. ‘What is it?’

‘We all talked about it last night and we decided that you can be in the Secrets Club.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, we like you. You’re actually pretty cool. But you have to tell us a secret to get in. That’s what, you know –’

‘– makes it the Secrets Club.’

‘Uh-huh.’

Dance played along. ‘An important secret?’

‘Any secret.’

Dance happened to be looking at a picture of her and Jon Boling, taken by the waiter at a wine tasting on a weekend away in Napa not long ago.

No.

A glance into the kitchen. ‘Okay, I’ve got one.’

‘What is it?’ The freckled girl’s eyes went wide.

‘When I was your age, at dinner, I’d put butter on the broccoli and feed it to our dog when my mother wasn’t looking.’

‘Her?’ Bethany glanced at Edie Dance, in the other room.

‘Her. Now, I’m trusting you. You won’t tell.’

‘No. I won’t tell. I don’t like broccoli either.’

Dance said, ‘Pretty much sucks, doesn’t it?’

Bethany nodded as if considering a litigant’s petition. Then passed judgment. ‘That’s a good secret. We’ll vote you in.’ She turned and trotted back to the den, where the other girls were waking.

The official, and presumably only, adult member of the Pacific Hills Secrets Club now left the house. She nodded at the MCSO deputy keeping guard and smiled. He waved back. Then Dance jumped into her SUV and drove to headquarters. She’d no sooner walked into the lobby than Rey Carreneo spotted her and said, ‘Looked into it, the situation you asked me about.’ He handed her a folder. ‘All in there.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Anything else, Kathryn?’

‘Not yet. But stay close.’

‘Sure.’

Dance flipped through the folder, skimmed. She closed it and walked through the corridors to Overby’s office. Her boss gestured her inside, dropping his landline phone into its cradle. ‘Sacramento.’ He said this with a grimace. An explanation would logically follow that but none was forthcoming and she didn’t press it. She supposed he’d been dinged because of the latest incident on the Peninsula – the hospital attack – and the corollary: the tardiness of finding the Solitude Creek killer. Or the Oakland warehouse fire, which had damaged Operation Pipeline. Or the Serrano operation.

Or just because bureaucracy was bureaucracy.

As she sat down in one of the office chairs, Michael O’Neil stepped into the office too.

‘Michael, greetings,’ Overby said.

‘Charles.’ Then to Dance a nod. She thought he looked tired, as he sat heavily beside her.

‘What do you have?’

The deputy answered, ‘The preliminary report from the hospital. Not much, sorry to say. But not surprising. Given how smart this guy is.’

‘How did he do it, the elevator?’

‘There’s not a lot of security video but it seems he dressed in scrubs – cap and booties too – and stole a key from the maintenance room. He got into the elevator motor room on the top floor, cut the wires feeding both cars. Primary and backup. CSU took tool marks but you know how helpful those are.’

‘There was some power,’ Dance said, recalling the blinding glare from the lights attached to the security camera. She explained this.

O’Neil said, ‘Probably battery backup for that in the car itself. But it must not’ve been connected to the intercom.’ He glanced at his notes. ‘There was a fire in the elevator shaft but it was from ether. Hot burn but no smoke. What people smelled was from the burning Honda. We think he did that to make sure the fire alarms didn’t go off. That would send an automatic notice to the fire department. They’d be there in five, ten minutes. He wanted to keep the carnage going for as long as he could.’

‘Well,’ Overby said.

Dance added, ‘And we have no idea what he’s driving now. There’s no security video in the garage at the hospital. If that’s, in fact, where he parked. Or, for all we know, he hiked a mile to where he left his new wheels.’

She explained that while she believed the unsub was a pro, hired by somebody else, their one suspect – Frederick Martin – had not panned out. The other victims at Solitude Creek seemed unlikely targets for a pro. ‘We’re back to thinking somebody may have been targeting the venues themselves. The roadhouse, the Bay View Center or the hospital. But why? We just don’t know.’

She noted that Overby wasn’t fully attentive. He was staring at his computer screen, which showed a streaming newscast from a local TV station. The Hero Fireman was giving another interview – this time about his efforts at the hospital incident.

Overby muted the set. ‘I read an article one time. It was pretty interesting. About a fireman in Buffalo, New York. You ever hear about it?’

There were presumably a lot of firemen in Buffalo, Dance reflected. But you usually let Charles Overby run with whatever it was he was running with. ‘No, Charles.’

‘Nup.’

‘He was pretty good at his job. Brave. There’d be a fire in an apartment. He’d race in, make his way around the flames, save a family or the pet dog. Happened three or four times. He knew just where the fire’d started, how best to fight it. Amazing how he saved people. His truck was usually first on the scene and he could read a fire like nobody else. That’s what they say: reading a fire. Firemen say that, I mean.

‘Well, guess what, boys and girls? The fireman set the fires himself. Not because he was a pyromaniac, if that’s what they call those people. No, he didn’t care about the fires. He cared about the prestige. The glory. He basked in it. Went away for attempted murder, in addition to the arson, burglary and assault charges. I think they dropped the vandalism. Didn’t need it, really.’

He stabbed a finger at the TV. ‘Have you noticed that Brad Dannon has been on the scene of the disasters pretty damn fast? And that he was real eager to talk to the media about what he did? “Hero”. That’s what they’re calling him. So. You think
he
might be the perp, your unsub?’ A faint smile of triumph.

‘I—’ Dance began.

‘Wonder why we didn’t think of that before?’

Dance wished he hadn’t added that last sentence. Throughout his monologue she’d been trying to figure out some way to sideline him before he tossed out a line like that.

Well, nothing to do.

She set the folder she’d just received on his desk. ‘Actually, Charles, I did wonder if Brad might be a suspect. So I had Rey Carreneo check him out.’ She tapped the file. ‘He correlated his whereabouts and checked phone records. After Bay View, we’ve got the unsub’s prepaid number. There was no connection. He’s innocent. His boss at MCFD says he’s usually on the scene in the first ten minutes of a call. He cruises around the county with a scanner, even when he’s off duty. Oh, and he’s known for being a real pain in the ass.’

A pause.

‘Oh. Good. Great minds think alike.’ And the look on his face wasn’t sheepishness for having been out-thought, Dance believed: it was pure relief that he hadn’t offered up the theory at a press conference only to recant a few hours later based on the findings of his suspended underling.

Dance’s mobile hummed. It was TJ Scanlon.

‘Hey.’

‘Boss, I’ve been plundering various and sundry records. Real estate, deeds, construction permits. Per your request.’

She knew he had. ‘Yes?’

‘Dusty. You’d think everything would be online but, un-uh. I’ve been prowling through shelves, back rooms. Caverns. Where are you?’

‘Charles’s office.’

‘I’ll be there in one. You’re going to want to see this.’

He arrived in less time than that. And his flecked Jefferson Airplane T-shirt and, yes, dusty jeans attested to his old-fashioned detective work.

Caverns …

He held a folder similar to the one she’d just passed to Overby.

‘Michael, Charles. Hey, boss. Okay. Check this out. Nobody got back to me from that Nevada company, the one planning the construction near Solitude Creek? So I thought I’d do some digging. Try to find shareholders, whatever. Well, the company’s owned by an
anonymous
trust. I tried to get a look at the trust but it’s not public. I could, though, find out who represents it. Barrett Stone, a lawyer in San Francisco. How’s that for a lawyer’s name? I’d want him representing me, I’ll tell you. Okay, I’ll get to the point. The phone company coughed up his call log for me, and I looked them over. Guess who the lawyer’s been calling? Three calls in the past two days.’