by Lisa Jackson
Once the cast was in place, and Randy was cleaning up the extra packaging, Kacey gave them instructions. “The main thing is that you don’t reinjure it. So you”—she eyed the boy—“have to take it easy for a while. No more climbing on the jungle gym, or being pushed by Cory Whoever.” She leaned down so that she was eyeball-to-eyeball with him. “Can you do that?”
Eli nodded, then looked down at his cast. “Maybe you tell him that? He’s a butthead.”
Trace was long-suffering. “I thought that was our secret. Remember?”
“Everybody knows,” Eli said.
“I guess the secret’s out,” Kacey said with a grin, then told Eli, “But I wouldn’t worry about Cory . . . uh . . .”
“Deter,” Trace supplied.
“Right. I think your dad will handle any trouble you have from him. I heard that he was an Army Ranger. From what I understand, those guys are pretty tough.”
“They are!” Eli declared, and Trace looked as if he wanted to fall through the floor.
“I think that’s enough,” he said, reaching for his son’s jacket when the boy blurted, “You look like Miss Wallis.”
Kacey glanced up at the father, who visibly winced. “Is that a good thing?”
“Yeah. I guess.” Trace nodded without a lot of conviction.
“Great.” First Shelly Bonaventure, now the unknown Miss Wallis. It seemed to be her week for resembling someone else.
Eli announced, “She’s my dad’s girlfriend.”
Every muscle in Trace’s body appeared to stiffen. “Eli, I told you that Miss Wallis and I—we’re not dating. She’s not my girlfriend.” Totally abashed, he said, “Sorry. Miss Wallis was Eli’s teacher last year, when he was in first grade.”
“And you went out on dates!” Eli glared up at his father.
He gazed apologetically at Kacey. “She and I did go out a couple of times, and yes, you do look a little like her.”
“I must have a face that looks familiar.”
He closed his eyes for half a second and shook his head, the overhead light catching in the blonder strands of his hair. “So, now that I’m completely embarrassed, can you tell me how to slow an active seven-year-old down?”
“It’s probably impossible, but you, Eli, remember to take it easy. No roughhousing. Got that?” She leaned down to meet the boy’s gaze, eye-to-eye once more.
He nodded solemnly.
“Promise? Scout’s honor?”
“I’m not a Cub Scout.”
“Okay, I’ll believe you,” she said, raising her eyebrows as if she really didn’t trust him, not quite.
“I will!” Eli was completely earnest.
“Good. ’Cuz your dad’ll be reporting to me.” She smiled at Trace, who started to smile back, then thought better of it when she told him that if the pain in his son’s arm was so great that over-the-counter pain medication didn’t help, he should call her. He nodded grimly.
As she wrote out the prescription, she added, “I’ll call about the throat culture. I’ll want to see you again”—she pointed her pen at Eli—“in about ten days. Can you do that?” The boy was nodding vigorously. “Good.” She ripped off the prescription and handed it to his father. “He’s going to be okay, though I think he should stay home from school for a couple of days.”
“Yessss!” Eli said and pumped his good arm, which suggested to Kacey that he was feeling better.
“Anyway,” she said to Trace, “call me if he’s in a lot of pain or something looks wrong to you. You’ll know. My service can reach me twenty-four-seven, and either Dr. Cortez or I will call you back ASAP.”
Trace tucked the prescription into his pocket and seemed a little less uptight than when she’d first examined his son a couple of hours earlier. He dropped Eli’s jacket over the boy’s shoulders.
“Now, Eli, you be good, okay? Do as your father says, and don’t give him any trouble. And, oh, stay away from bullies,” Kacey advised.
“Thanks.” Trace’s intense blue eyes were sincere, and when he shook her hand again, she thought the clasp lasted a bit longer than normal. Then again, maybe she was imagining things.
She exited the room as Randy made notes on the computer and followed her into exam room two. Attempting to push all thoughts of the rangy cowboy from her mind, she turned her attention to Delores Sweeney, a mother of four who was always battling a cold, the flu, or a yeast infection. . . or something....
CHAPTER 5
“ The drawing for Secret Santas was this morning!”
Joelle scolded as Pescoli walked into the lunchroom to fill her coffee cup in the early afternoon. The entire cafeteria area was what Pescoli had termed “Joelled.” Christmas lights winked around every surface, the tables all had little snowmen centerpieces, fir boughs festooned with ribbons had been swagged over the doorway, and the regular white napkins in the coffee station had been replaced with red and green.
Even so, Pescoli suspected, the decorating wasn’t yet finished; it would soon spill into the hallways, offices, and reception area, where already a ten-foot, yet-to-be-adorned tree stood near the bulletproof glass that had been installed over the counter this past spring.
“I was here at seven, then had work out of the office,” Pescoli said, then gave herself a swift mental kick. She didn’t need to explain her whereabouts to the receptionist.
“Well, you’re not the only one who missed out.” Joelle’s eyes twinkled, and Pescoli inwardly groaned, knowing she hadn’t escaped. “So here . . .” She picked up a basket decorated with candy canes and held it high over her head, as if she truly expected Pescoli to cheat and look at the names she’d scribbled on the scraps of paper.
“Seriously? Everyone’s doing this?” Pescoli asked suspiciously.
“Of course!”
“Including the sheriff?”
“Absolutely.”
“What about Rule?” Pescoli asked, mentioning Kayan Rule, a strapping African American man who had no use for any kind of silliness. One of the more independent of the road deputies, Rule was as unlikely as anyone to be involved in Joelle’s stupid games.
“Already drew his name this morning, as did Selena.”
Great, Pescoli thought but, deciding she had been accused too many times of not being a team player, lifted her arm and reached into the basket, where she plucked one of the few remaining scraps of paper with her fingertips.
“Wonderful!” Joelle was pleased with herself. “Now, don’t forget to leave him or her little gifts at least one a week, until Christmas!”
Pescoli unfolded the piece of paper, and her stomach dropped as she read the name scrawled across the small scrap:
Cort Brewster.
“I have to draw again!” she blurted.
Joelle snatched back the basket and raised a condescending, if perfectly tweezed eyebrow. “There are no doovers, Detective. That’s what happens when you come late to the party.”
Pescoli wanted to argue the point but decided she couldn’t stoop to groveling over something so trivial. She nearly forgot her cup of coffee as she left the lunchroom, with its festive snowmen and sparkling lights, and made her way to Alvarez’s cubicle.
Her partner, as usual, was bent over paperwork. “Trade with me,” Pescoli said.
“What?” Alvarez glanced up.
“For the Secret Santa thing. Trade with me.”
For once, Alvarez actually laughed. “No way.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“The whole thing is ridiculous,” Pescoli grumbled.
“So don’t worry about it. Just buy some candy or a DVD or something, leave it on Brewster’s desk, and call it good.”
“You know?”
“I am a detective. No one else’s name would get you so agitated.” Her smile was knowing. “You could have some fun with this, you know.”
“It’s not that easy,” Pescoli said, thinking of how the undersheriff and she hadn’t gotten along since the debacle la
st year, when Jeremy had been arrested. At the time he’d been with Heidi Brewster, and her father had intervened. Pescoli hadn’t, and her son hadn’t really ever forgiven her. Nor had Cort. He seemed to blame Pescoli for her son’s and his daughter’s bad behavior.
“Sure it is. Or opt out.”
“Joelle said—”
“That it was mandatory? Seriously? The Secret Santa thing? I don’t think so, but I’ll double-check the personnel policy manual.”
“Do that,” Pescoli said, annoyed.
Alvarez’s grin widened, and she slowly shook her head. “Since when do you listen to Joelle?”
“Since I don’t want to appear to always be bucking the system.”
“Then quit bitching, okay?” Alvarez turned her attention back to the stack of papers in front of her. “I hate it when you start whining like a baby.”
“I can’t believe you bought into it,” Pescoli declared, then noticed her partner’s expression turn more serious, her eyes darken a bit. “Is this a sheriff’s department or a damned bridge club?”
“Maybe we could all use a little Christmas spirit,” Alvarez said, adding, “Don’t you have something more important to worry about?”
“Only about a million things.” Not only her work, but there was that meeting at the school later today to discuss Bianca’s waning interest in anything to do with Grizzly Falls High School. Then there was Jeremy . . . always Jeremy.
“So forget Secret Santa. Who cares?”
She was right, Pescoli supposed, sipping her cooling coffee on her way to her office. It was nothing and yet she was bothered. Working with Cort Brewster and having him as her boss were bad enough; sucking up to him by buying inane little Christmas gifts turned her stomach.
“It could get worse,” Alvarez said.
“I don’t see how.”
“Joelle could have your name.”
Pescoli closed her eyes and shuddered, envisioning myriads of plastic elves, cards that sang Christmas carols, windup nutcrackers with their grouchy faces, and chocolate reindeer, which Joelle, no doubt, had already squirreled away. Soon some of those items could litter her desk, every day a new and even more ridiculous cutesy Christmas gift hidden between the gory images in her homicide files.
“Pray that isn’t so,” she muttered under her breath and found her way to her desk, where so far, thankfully, no tiny surprises from her Secret Santa lay in wait.
“You gotta let it go.” Gail Harding had sneaked up on Hayes, approaching his desk without him knowing. The department was buzzing, voices filtering over the half walls, telephones jangling. Jonas Hayes had barely noticed. He’d been lost in thought.
Shelly Bonaventure’s file lay open on his desk, her death certificate on the top of the stack of papers, her picture, a head shot taken just last year, staring up at him.
“I’m not letting anything go. Not yet.”
“Her death was ruled a suicide.” Harding pointed to the appropriate line on the certificate. “See here? Cause of death. Probable suicide.”
“Probable being the operative word.”
“Case closed. It’s over.”
Hayes shook his head and shoved back his chair. “It doesn’t hurt for me to work on this, on my own time.” He stood and, in so doing, towered over her by nearly a foot. They were an odd pair, he knew. He was an ex-jock, a black man who still kept his body honed with ratball and weights, and she was a petite white girl with spiky red hair and huge eyes.
“I’m on my way over to an ‘accident’ on Sepulveda, a few blocks from the airport. A motorcycle pulled into oncoming traffic. First reports are that there was no reason for it. It looked intentional. The Honda, with a rider on the back, got hit by an SUV going the other way. You coming?”
He grimaced. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
Glancing at the file one more time, he gave it a cursory scan before shutting it and following Harding to the elevators. She was probably right. It was time to let the Shelly Bonaventure suicide go, but he just couldn’t.
They’d interviewed most of her friends and family, none of whom had seen the suicide coming. Yes, there had been a little talk of depression, and yes, her career wasn’t on the upswing, and her love life had been nonexistent for the past year, but suicide still seemed unlikely.
The bartender at Lizards had mentioned that she’d been flirting with a man who hadn’t paid with a credit card and whose image hadn’t been clear on any of the security tapes of the building. But he had left after Shelly and, according to the one camera near the front door, had headed in the opposite direction that Shelly had taken twenty minutes earlier.
Just a chance meeting at the bar?
Or something more?
“Hey!” Harding said as they pushed open the doors and stepped into the warm winter sunshine. Seventy-five degrees, and already the local stores were decorated to the max with wintry Christmas images, festooned with fake fir trees and even faker snow. Santas, reindeer, elves, and gingerbread houses were on display, and it wasn’t quite Thanksgiving.
Strings of colored lights had been wound over the trunks of the royal palms, their fronds billowing in a balmy breeze blowing in off the Pacific.
Christmas in L.A.
He slid into Harding’s car. The interior of her hatchback was sweltering, and he rolled down the window. “Okay, so tell me, why do you think someone murdered Shelly Bonaventure?” she asked.
“Not sure.”
“She had no enemies, no angry boyfriends, no life insurance, no will, and less than three hundred dollars in the bank. Her biggest assets were a ninety-five Toyota and her cat. Who would want her dead?”
“I don’t know,” he reiterated as she tore out of the lot, her lead foot pressing hard on the accelerator.
“Yet,” Harding added as she sped toward Sepulveda. “You didn’t finish your sentence. You don’t know yet. You’re not letting go of this.”
“I’d just like to personally talk to the guy at the bar. He’s the last one to have seen her alive. He might remember something more.”
“Good luck with that. You’ve heard about needles and haystacks, right?”
“Right.”
She slashed him a knowing grin as she took a corner a little too fast. “That might not ever happen.”
For once, he couldn’t argue.
But he still wanted to have a chat with the mystery man at the bar.
Trace grabbed his cell phone by the third ring. As he did, he noticed that it was nearly four and caller ID listed Evergreen Elem. as the caller. Eli’s school. “Hello?” he said into the phone.
“Mr. O’Halleran? This is Barbara Killingsworth, the principal here at Evergreen Elementary. I was just calling to check on Eli.” In his mind’s eye, he pictured the woman: midforties, impossibly thin, with pinched features and a wide mouth that was forever in a tight, forced smile.
“He’s doing all right,” Trace said, glancing over at his son, who was sleeping on the couch, his arm in the cast, the television turned to some movie he wasn’t watching, the dog curled at his feet. “But I want to know who was supposed to be watching him.” He walked into the kitchen of the old farmhouse and pulled the swinging door to the family room shut so that he wouldn’t disturb Eli.
“We had several teachers on playground duty.”
“And none of them saw the potential danger in . . . ?” He let his question fade away and forced his anger at bay. What was the point? He knew accidents happened. No one at Evergreen Elementary was malicious or even inattentive. The kids were just messing around, and his boy got hurt. End of story. He didn’t want to come off like some overprotective jerk, and yet when it came to Eli . . .
“I’m very sorry.”
“I know. Look, he’s got a double ear infection and possibly strep throat, so I’m going to keep him home for at least a couple of days.”
“I’ll have his teacher e-mail you, and tell Eli that we’re all thinking of him.”
“I will,” he said and hung
up just as he heard a rumble outside. He glanced out the window and saw Ed Zukov’s truck as it rolled down the twin ruts of the long drive.
Sarge, who had been sleeping seconds earlier, lifted his scruffy head and gave a low bark.
“Shh!” Trace headed for the back door.
Ed and his wife, Tilly, were the neighbors a quarter of a mile down the road and had been friends of his father. Trace had known the couple, now in their seventies, all his life. He walked through the kitchen and back porch with Sarge at his heels.
The wind was picking up, causing the old windmill’s blades to creak as they turned and the naked branches of the trees in the orchard to rattle. Snow was falling steadily now, big white flakes swirling and beginning to cover the ground, as the old truck slowed to a stop near the pump house.
Spry as a thirty-year-old, Tilly hopped down from the cab of the ancient truck the minute her husband cut the engine. “We heard about Eli,” she said, a baseball cap covering her head as she marched around the front of the old Dodge. She was carrying a hamper, which wasn’t unusual. In the face of any crisis, Tilly Zukov turned to her pantry and stove.
“He’ll be fine.” Since Tilly was a world-class worrier, he decided not to mention the ear infections. “How’d you know?”
“I have a niece who works in the kitchen at Evergreen.”
“Small town.” Ed, a solid man with a wide girth and arms as big as sapling trunks, slammed the door of his truck behind him and followed his wife up the two stairs of the screened-in back porch. “Jesus, it’s cold!”
“Ed! Do not take our Lord’s name in vain,” Tilly reprimanded as they stopped just inside the kitchen door. In her plaid jacket and faded jeans, she was tiny, half her husband’s size, but she obviously ruled the roost. Her hair was steel gray and tightly permed, and rimless glasses were perched on the bridge of her tiny nose. From behind the lenses, dark eyes snapped with intelligence. To Trace, she said, “I brought over some stew and fresh baked corn bread, and some ranger cookies, ’cuz they’re Eli’s favorite.”