“She had a towel.”
“Thank god.”
“I already did.”
She smiled at that, and he couldn’t help but like her a little for it. At least she understood how this looked, and had enough sense to be embarrassed.
“She likes to find the boundaries, and then cross them,” Mona Castelli said. “With her, it’s always been push push push.”
“Okay.”
“Now she’s at the Academy of Art—which hasn’t suppressed her penchant for streaking. Apparently, they encourage it. She volunteers as a studio model.”
He let that sit on the table between them, not sure what she wanted him to do with it. She sipped her martini, then put the glass down. Behind her, there was a wall of fog moving off the ocean toward the Presidio. It would hit the cliffs and stall, piling along the shore toward the north until it could spill under the bridge and into the bay.
“Do you have children, Mr. Cain?”
“Not yet.”
“God help you if you have a daughter,” Mona said. She looked across the rim of her glass and met his eyes for the first time. “The Montgomery girl—Melissa—said this was important. And I know there’s a police car down the street. Men posted there, to watch us. Are we in some sort of danger?”
“Ms. Montgomery didn’t say what’s going on?”
He wondered at the way she’d just referred to Melissa Montgomery but knew better than to ask about it. Either that would come out, or it wouldn’t. Asking wouldn’t make any difference.
“You needed to talk to us. That’s all she said.”
“What about your husband?”
“What about him?” she asked. “Did he say anything to me? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Did he?”
“Since when?”
“Since last night. Or this morning.”
“He slept in his office last night,” she said. Her laugh sounded like ice swirling in a glass. “He does that sometimes, when he’s busy. It’s such a long way, from City Hall to here.”
Cain had just driven it, and had watched the odometer so he could claim the mileage. It had taken him eighteen minutes, in traffic.
“He didn’t call, or email?”
“Call? Email? This is Harry we’re talking about?”
“Did anyone call for him?”
“Besides Melissa, to set this up?” she asked. “Nobody.”
“He didn’t get any message to you? I’m talking about the letter.”
“What letter?”
No wonder Castelli hadn’t wanted him to come anywhere near his family. The man had political aspirations that ran to a national scale. He probably already had a guest list for his next inauguration party. But his home life belonged on cable TV.
“Let me ask you something else,” Cain said. “How’d you meet Harry?”
She looked at the martini pitcher for a long moment but didn’t touch it. He thought of John Fonteroy, dying of cancer and longing for a plastic cup of water that lay cruelly out of reach.
“He was at a San Jose startup. NavSoft is what it was called,” she said. That icy laugh again. “This was after he got his MBA, and they hired him as a vice president.”
“You’re talking, what, 1996?”
“Closer to ’ninety-seven.”
“So he was an executive,” Cain said. “What were you doing?”
“I was in college—I was his intern.”
“College where?”
“Stanford.”
“Undergrad?”
“A freshman,” she said.
“You finished in 2001?”
“I didn’t finish.”
She gave the pitcher a stir and then refilled her glass. There was no way to tell how much was left in the pitcher. For that matter, there was no way to guess how full it had been when he’d arrived, or how many she’d gone through earlier in the day.
“Why not?” he said.
“Why do you think? I was an eighteen-year-old intern. He was—Whatever. It doesn’t matter what I thought back then.”
“What do you think now?”
“You know the story,” she said. She used her glass to gesture at the Pacific where it crashed against the cliff beneath her house. “And now here we are. Here I am. I won the lottery, right?”
“It looks like it.”
“Then why are you here, Mr. Cain?” she asked. “Why do the police have the street blocked off?”
“Someone’s threatening him,” Cain said. “Trying to get at him with a letter. We don’t understand it—maybe it’s something from his past?”
“Is that a question?”
“Is there anything we need to know?”
“Know about what?” she asked. “He’s an open book. The most boring man you’ll ever meet. If you want to know something about him, you can Google it.”
She drained another glass. Christ, Cain thought. These Castellis. He hadn’t come here looking for much more than a sense of who they were. How they behaved on their own ground, how they worked as a family. He was getting about as much as he could stand.
“What about Melissa Montgomery?” he asked. “What’s her story?”
“She’s his chief of staff,” Mona said. “She started as his intern. She was in college, and he was in Congress. And then she worked her way up.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?” she asked. “I thought you were asking questions.”
“Do you trust her?”
“She’s my husband’s chief of staff.”
“She called you and set this up,” Cain said. “She didn’t tell him. So that makes me wonder about her loyalties.”
“I don’t know what she tells him. I don’t know her thoughts on loyalty. I don’t know anything. I’m here, and she’s over there, with him, and that’s all I’ve got.”
“So then, you don’t trust her.”
“I didn’t say that,” she said. “She’s doing what anyone would do. What I did.”
He watched while she refilled her glass. When she was done she straightened up and put her hair back behind her shoulders again. She must have practiced in a mirror, the way she moved her hands through her hair and looked up. There was probably enough gin in her blood that she’d go up in flames if she lit a match. But when she moved, she was as steady as a surgeon. There was no natural talent for that. She’d been training.
“Are we done?” she asked.
“For now.”
“You really have to talk to Alexa?”
“Yes.”
“If Harry’s done something—”
“I won’t tell her anything I didn’t tell you,” he said. “I’m not here to upset her.”
“Thank you.”
He watched her gin-wet eyes. Shouldn’t she have tried, just a little, to find out what he was holding back? What he might say that would upset Alexa?
“I’ll talk to her in the kitchen,” Cain said. “You’ll sit in the den, so you’re out of sight, but you’ll still be able to hear. Sound good?”
She nodded, then stood up.
“I’ll make sure she’s got clothes on—I know that’s what you’re worried about.”
It wasn’t the only thing on his mind, but he was happy to let Mona Castelli think it. Assuming it was what she actually thought.
Alexa came to the kitchen wearing a checked gingham dress. She pulled out a stool and sat with her elbows on the marble center island. The window behind her looked across a garden in the side yard. A bronze birdbath, wrapped in ivy, caught the rain. He watched the water and thought about where to begin with Alexa. It always made sense to start with something he knew. The more he seemed to know, the less likely she’d be to tell him a lie.
“You’re an artist. Your mom and I were just talking.”
“Yeah.”
“Painting? Sculpture?”
“Both,” she said. “Mostly painting.”
“You must not live here all the time, if you’re going to the Academy.
”
“I’ve got an apartment South of Market. A studio. It’s close to school.”
“How come you’re here?” Cain asked.
“Melissa asked me.”
“You know her pretty well?”
“She’s family, almost.”
“Explain that.”
“She was at the house all the time when I was younger,” Alexa said. She was looking at him, winding a lock of her wet hair around her index finger so that the water dripped onto her chest. “She’d pick me up from school, stay over for dinner. Stuff like that.”
“Did she tell you why I want to talk to you?”
“No.”
“Did you ask?”
“I guess I figured—”
She trailed off, glancing at the doorway to the den.
“You figured what?”
“He’s the mayor,” Alexa said. “So there’s always something going on. Is he in trouble?”
“We don’t know,” he answered. “It might be nothing. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“What does that mean?”
“There was a letter, someone trying to blackmail him.”
“Blackmail him with what?”
“He says it’s a hoax,” Cain said. “But it has to do with a girl. Something that happened to a girl, in 1985.”
He made sure his voice would carry to the den.
“That was before I was born.”
“I don’t expect you to know anything about it,” Cain said. “And even if it’s a hoax, like he thinks, we have to follow up. The girl was a blonde. Your age, maybe, or a couple years older. A good-looking girl, like Lauren Bacall.”
Without getting off her stool, Alexa leaned to a drawer on the far end of the bar and quietly slid it open. She brought out a pad of stationery and a pencil, her eyes on the doorway to the den.
“How often do you see your father?” he asked. They’d have to keep the rhythm of the conversation going.
“Besides on TV?”
“Face to face.”
“A couple times a month. He’s busy, and so am I.”
She wrote something on the pad and slid it over to him. He glanced at the words—China Beach in 2 hrs—then tore the top sheet from the pad and put it in his pocket. Maybe there was more to this visit than just lifting the lid on their home and seeing the Castellis in their natural habitat.
He started to ask the questions he had to ask. Throwaways that didn’t matter, except to let Mona Castelli hear them.
“In the last couple of weeks, have you seen anyone following you?”
“No.”
“Have you had any conversations with anyone—especially anyone your father knows—that seemed unusual?”
“No.”
“Have you bumped into anyone on the street you hadn’t seen in a long time, maybe just someone who looked familiar?”
“No.”
“Strange phone calls or emails?”
“Nothing like that,” she said. Then she mouthed the words two hours and pointed toward the ocean.
“All right,” he said. “Thank you for your time, Miss Castelli. This is my card. You can call me day or night if you think of something.”
9
HE DROVE FOR five minutes, long enough to put some distance between himself and the Castellis, and then he pulled to the curb and called Grassley.
“Buddy,” he said, when his partner picked up. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”
“You never call me buddy.”
“I should start. How’s it coming?”
“Four hours since we opened the lid,” Grassley whispered, “and they’ve just got them out of the casket. The crime scene guy came, got whatever prints he could inside the lid—it was that guy you like.”
“Sumida?”
“That’s him—Sumida,” Grassley said. “This is taking forever.”
“That’s good.”
It meant they weren’t rushing, that they were documenting everything. The casket wasn’t just a burial. If they’d read it correctly, it was both the murder weapon and the crime scene. Moving her out would destroy it, and then the only record would be the photographs.
“Christopher Hanley, too?” he asked. “They took him out?”
“The longest part was getting them separated. Sorting them out—this bit goes with that body. But now all of her is on one table, all of him on another. More or less.”
“What’s Dr. Levy doing now?”
“She was just getting to the surface examination,” Grassley said. “And then Mrs. Hanley showed up. I don’t know who leaked it, but someone did. She knew about the girl.”
“Shit.”
“What I thought,” Grassley said. “I did my best to get her to calm down, but how’s she going to do that?”
“She isn’t.”
“She wants us to ID him, and that’s it—no autopsy. And wash him. She’s pretty clear on that, she wants him washed. A fresh suit, too.”
“Anything else?”
“A new casket. And so, I said: Lady, sure. Anything. You bring us the new suit and a new casket, and we’ll wash him up and take care of him.”
“Grassley—”
“Now I know. Okay? Dr. Levy took me aside—and I’m not shitting you, she took me by my ear, and she pulled me around a corner—and then she lost her shit.”
“She’s not a funeral director.”
“She said that,” Grassley said. “And some other stuff.”
“Did you go back to Mrs. Hanley and walk it back?”
“I’d already said it. How could we walk it back?” Grassley said. “Even Dr. Levy said we couldn’t do that.”
“So now she’s on the hook to wash him and dress him up.”
“And ID him first, which she would’ve done anyway,” Grassley said. “We gave Mrs. Hanley an oral swab. The lab can ID him with a DNA match to her.”
“Did she say how she found out?”
“Found out what?”
“How she heard about the girl,” Cain said. “We need to know who told her.”
“It was a reporter. Lady called from the paper, wanted a comment.”
“Shit.”
“What I thought.”
“Dr. Levy’s going to finish today?”
“No way—they’ll keep going a bit, but she’s putting them in the icebox at five o’clock.”
“Fine,” Cain said.
He guessed Rachel Levy would’ve pushed through, however long it took, if Grassley hadn’t pissed her off by volunteering her as an undertaker.
“Did you track down Inspector Chun?” Cain asked.
“She can come. She says she’s got time.”
“Five thirty,” Cain said. “At the Western.”
“We’ll be there.”
Cain hung up, then looked at the clock on the dashboard. There was time before he had to meet Alexa Castelli. He drove to the Deli Eliseevski, on Geary, and picked out a half-dozen things he knew Lucy would eat. He bought a bottle of sparkling mineral water for her, a can of Baltika for himself. She liked lemon in her water, but there were lemon trees in her backyard. As long as it was dark, she’d even go out herself to pick them.
The house was quiet when he stepped inside, balancing the deli packages and putting his keys away.
“Lucy?”
No answer. He went through the living room and the dining room. The kitchen, to the left, was empty. A pair of French doors led to the music room, and he could see through the glass panes that she wasn’t there. The piano’s lid was closed. The windows overlooking the garden were open a crack, the wind coming in and putting raindrops on the sill. He slid them shut.
He went to the kitchen and put his packages away, and then he went upstairs.
He found her in the walk-in closet, leaning against the back wall, half hidden by the sleeves of the coats hanging above her. The light was off when he opened the door, and he didn’t see her at all until he turned the switch.
&nbs
p; After a moment, she looked up at him.
“You’re early.”
“It’s just for a minute,” he said. “I have to go out again.”
“Okay.”
He took off his shoes and came into the closet. It smelled of leather and wool and Lucy’s shampoo. He moved a shoebox out of the way and sat beside her. She took his hand in hers and laid it above her navel.
“I come in here sometimes,” she said. “It’s just—I like to think in here.”
“Okay.”
“I’m getting better, Gavin.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to worry about us.”
“I don’t.”
“You do,” she said. “I know you do. But you don’t have to, is what I’m saying.”
“Okay.”
“How long do you have, before you need to go?”
“Not long,” he said. “I have to meet the mayor’s daughter. To interview her. Then meet Grassley and Inspector Chun.”
“When will you be back?”
“After dark. But not too late. Maybe nine?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Right in here?”
“I don’t know.”
“I brought you blinties. And that salmon you like.”
She made a sound and he looked over, not sure if she was laughing until he saw her face.
“Blinis,” she said. “Not blinties.”
“Okay.”
“That was cute.”
“Are you really going to sit in here?”
“If I want to,” she said. “It’s up to me, isn’t it?”
He had no answer to that. For months, he’d been thinking that he ought to leave. Not because he didn’t love her, but because he didn’t know how to help her. And he was sure that every time she woke up next to him, he made it a little harder for her. She wouldn’t forget how they’d met, what he represented. It wasn’t fair to her that he’d wanted her, that he’d pursued her.
But any thought of leaving had disappeared in December.
Maybe she never left the house. Maybe the first time he’d seen her, Lieutenant Nagata and the district attorney had been with him, and Lucy took too long in coming to the door because she’d been hiding in the closet. They hadn’t meant to get where they were, but they hadn’t done much to stop it, either. Everything about their love had been reckless, so that eight weeks ago, when he came in and she met him at the door, he’d known. She hadn’t said a word to him, but he’d known.
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