by Lora Roberts
“Okay, but after I call I’m coming right back.”
“Just don’t set him off. You’ve given him enough food for thought, assuming he’s capable of digesting it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She strode up the path, pushing past Tom Dancey to head for the gate.
He watched her go with relief, and turned to me.
“She’s going to the library for a little while.” I gave him a measured look. “Say what you want to say quickly.”
“Thanks for talking to me. I know I’m not thinking too straight,” he said, his voice low. “I know this is foolish. I know the police think it was an accident. Maybe it was. Maybe it was.” He sighed. “I just don’t want her to be dead at all. That’s the problem.”
“You and your sister were close?”
“She was never my sister,” he corrected me. “She called herself that, but I never thought of her as a sister from the moment she came to live at our house. At first she was just a confounded nuisance, and then—”
His eyes slid away, his voice died.
“You were dating, I heard?”
“Dating.” The harsh laugh seemed forced out of him. “What a word to describe what we did! She was—so out there, so bewitching. I couldn’t help myself. I had to give her whatever she wanted. I guess I should have known she’d want her freedom. I even gave her that. But I never stopped loving her. Never.”
In the silence that followed his passionate outburst, I could hear the rustle of squirrels in the ivy, checking their winter stores, and the sound of cars whooshing past on Embarcadero Road. Voices called to each other from the cultural center. A businessman, probably on his lunch break, strolled along the perimeter path, looking with enjoyment at the garden plots he passed, and giving Tom Dancey and me a curious glance.
“Did she say anything to make you think someone here at the garden wanted to hurt her?”
His head came up in surprise. I wished I’d never asked the question—that was for Bruno to do, not me. But somehow Dancey seemed ripe for it.
“Yes, she did,” he answered, blinking away his confusion. “After she told me … after we stopped ‘dating’”—his voice surrounded the despised word with quote marks—“she started seeing someone from here.”
“Webster?”
“Yes, that’s the name. Webster something or other. Anyway, she spent more time at the garden then, and once she said to me that something fishy was going on.” He flushed a little. “It’s no secret that my family has proposed a HUD-sanctioned low-income project for this site, and we’re having some trouble getting a determination from the city. She knew I’d be interested in anything that would—tarnish the garden and make housing seem more desirable.”
“And you want my help to finish the job?” I tried to keep my voice even, but I was starting to feel a tirade well up within me.
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” he said, shrugging it off with supreme disinterest. “What does anything matter? She’s dead. And she thought something fishy was going on here. Didn’t another woman die last night? Seems to me that Rita was right.”
I was still hung up on the idea of Rita as treacherous spy for her family’s interests. “Didn’t it mean anything to Rita that she worked here? She was willing to sell us down the river to developers?”
“Low-income housing is important.” Dancey’s voice lacked conviction.
“And I suppose your firm is working on a pro bono basis.”
“Heck, no,” he said, and gave me a watery grin. “Look, this is beside the point. I can’t begin to care about it. As far as I’m concerned, this site is only one thing now. Rita’s graveyard.”
“Tom—” I put out a hand, but he didn’t see for a few minutes, sunk in unpalatable thought. I didn’t try to interrupt him.
Then he made a visible effort and smiled at me. Dancey’s smile was charming, indeed. Though he was probably no older than my age of mid-thirties, his face was already creased and deeply suntanned. All the melancholy lines rearranged themselves when he smiled, though.
“This was a mistake, I know.” He blinked, and his voice firmed. “Maybe I’m brooding too much, keeping too much to myself. If there is anything fishy going on in this garden, I’m not going to find out by pestering the gardeners. But if you hear anything, would you contact me?” He reached in his pocket, and pulled out his hand, empty. He looked at it with vague surprise. “I forgot my cards today. Never mind.”
He smiled again, but it didn’t quite reach those reddened eyes. I thought he was turning to go, so I started talking to keep him there until Bruno showed up. “Well, the fishiest thing around here normally is just kelp and fish emulsion. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t something going on. Unfortunately, the woman who knew the most about everything was the one who died last night after your sister’s memorial. I don’t know who else you’d ask. Most everyone has told what they knew to the police, so—” I saw with relief that Bruno was rounding the corner of the equipment shed, with Amy trailing along behind him.
Dancey followed the direction of my gaze. “Who is that?” His voice sharpened.
“It’s Bruno Morales, the officer in charge of the investigation into these deaths.” I waved, and Bruno waved back. “You said you were going to get in touch with him. And here he is! How convenient.”
“Very,” he muttered, looking suspiciously at me. His hand inside the pocket of his fleece vest clenched.
“Mr. Dancey. So good to finally touch base with you.” Bruno charged up, holding out his hand as if in friendly greeting. Dancey was taller and broader, but I would have backed Bruno in a fight.
Dancey shook hands, reluctantly, and Bruno began to pull him along. “I’m parked just over there,” he said, leading the way down the garden path. Amy stayed outside the fence until Bruno had taken Dancey through the gate. “Let’s go sit in my car. I have much to ask you.”
“Fine.” The dispirited look settled over Dancey’s face. “I’ve got some questions for you, too.”
Amy came over to the plot, where I was quickly packing up the tools. “Wow. Is Bruno arresting that guy?”
“I don’t think so. He just wants to talk to him. And I don’t think Dancey would have hurt his stepsister. He was—very fond of her.”
“He’s nutso,” Amy said bluntly. “I was kind of afraid to leave you alone in here with him, but Bruno—Mr. Morales—said I should stay at the library until he got there.” She shivered. “It would be pretty creepy if he killed her, wouldn’t it? I mean, we would have been talking to a murderer.” Her eyes grew round. “I could have been slanging a murderer, right to his face!”
“I don’t think he is. But if so, we’d better watch out.”
“Why?” Amy picked up the shovel and a bucket. “He’s been hauled away.”
“He’s being questioned. He’ll be out of Bruno’s car after that. And we’ll be long gone, so he can’t follow us home and continue our conversation.”
Amy was silent while we loaded the bus. We hopped in, much to Barker’s pleasure, and tooled out of the parking lot, passing Bruno’s car on the way. Bruno had been driven over in a cruiser, instead of driving his own car, which meant he expected trouble. He sat in back with Tom Dancey, while Officer Rhea sat in front. It looked like Bruno was taking Dancey very seriously indeed.
“He’ll be mad when Bruno lets him go, won’t he?” Amy’s voice was small. “Won’t he, Aunt Liz?”
“Yeah.” I turned toward Embarcadero instead of taking Newell to Channing, as I would have if I were on my way straight home. “Yeah, I think he will.”
Chapter 20
Parking the bus at the end of my driveway, I saw from the corner of my eye a figure rise up on the front porch. I jammed on the brake faster than I meant to, and Amy’s seat belt snapped her back into her seat.
“What—”
Before the panic could blossom, I realized that the majestic figure was Claudia Kaplan, hauling herself out of the fraying wicker chair on the porch. She wa
s clad, as usual, in one of her flowing outfits, and wore her iron-gray hair pulled back in a bun, much as she’d probably worn it when she was an undergraduate years before. Her queenly figure advanced on us when we hopped out of Babe.
“Liz. Oh, I see Amy is visiting. Hello, Amy.” She offered a ritual embrace, but bent her commanding gaze on me. “Liz. There’s something very strange going on.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Actually,” Claudia said, reflecting briefly, “several strange things. Did you know a woman was parked across your driveway when I got here today?”
“Carlotta.”
“You know her?” Claudia’s brows bent into a frown. “She babbled some nonsense about watching you. I told her to go away and never come back, so I’m sorry if she’s a friend.”
“Far from it.” I gave Claudia a hug myself. “Thanks for sending her away, but she’ll be back. She’s stalking me.”
Amy turned around. “You said something about being stalked yesterday, Aunt Liz. What is going on here, anyway?”
“I have much the same question.” Claudia looked on Amy with approval. “Do you have a few minutes to talk, Liz?”
“Sure. I just want to get this stuff put away.” I opened the back of the bus and pulled out the shovel and rake.
Amy took the buckets and unlocked the garage for me. “I’ll clean the tools if you want to put the veggies away,” she said. “But don’t say anything, like, major until I’m there.”
Claudia followed me into the kitchen. “Isn’t it the middle of the school year? Has Amy transferred out here?”
“Shh.” I peered through the window over the sink to make sure Amy was still in the garage. “Don’t put such an idea into her head, although it’s probably already there. Her school had a fire, so the students are off for a while, and she’s doing college visitation here.”
Claudia subjected me to the penetrating stare that is characteristic of her. “What’s the real reason?”
“Why don’t you think that’s the real reason?”
“Because her mother didn’t come with her.” Claudia swept the living room with a comprehensive glance. “Her mother would never have let Amy go off college visiting alone. And there’s only one bag here erupting with female apparel. Amy’s mother didn’t come, so the college visiting is just an excuse.”
“Well, you’re right, but the real reason is Amy’s private business, so I can’t tell it.”
“She’s pregnant.” Claudia observed me closely as she made this pronouncement, and then nodded with satisfaction. “She’s come here to take care of it. Very sensible. I always thought she had a good head on her shoulders.” She paused. “Of course, it’s an imposition on you. Will she be staying several months?”
“I don’t believe so.” Our eyes met for a long moment. “I don’t think she’s really firmly made up her mind about her course of action. We’re just coping with one day at a time.” I lifted the little lettuces out of the colander and rolled them in a dish towel, which I tucked into the refrigerator.
“So, this woman who’s stalking you. What’s that about?”
“You remember her—Carlotta. She lived next door when Vivien was alive.”
“I didn’t know your Vivien very well, and I don’t think I met Carlotta at all.” Claudia pulled over a bowl of lady apples on the kitchen table and chose one after careful examination. The apples had been gleaned through an elderly friend of Bridget’s who lived in Los Altos Hills. I had permission to pick anything in her orchard, which was no longer plowed and sprayed, but which still gave apricots and plums and peaches and apples in season. The fruit was small and occasionally wormy, but deliciously sweet with a wild tang, excellent for jams and preserves.
“Carlotta is just trying to find something to do with her time, now that she’s at the Forum and hasn’t got many household chores to keep her busy.” I spoke with a degree of dismissal I was far from feeling. Claudia was a powerful weapon; she was not the type to stand by and see a friend troubled. If she decided to take care of Carlotta for me, it could get ugly.
“She had better find something else to do besides bother you,” Claudia said, burnishing her chosen apple on her sleeve. She bit into it, her large, white teeth closing with a snap. She had excellent teeth for her age.
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” I spoke as forcefully as I could. The force rather bounced off Claudia.
Amy came in. “All right. Now, what did that man say?”
Claudia raised her eyebrows. “What man? Is there something else besides your stalker?”
“Is there!” Amy plunged into a rather incoherent account, while I silently cursed the gods who had sent Claudia over on this day of all days. She was immersed in her latest book, which was a definitive biography of Jane Lathrop Stanford that required a ton of reading and a lot of time spent in various Stanford libraries. I had probably seen more of her during the past couple of months than anyone else in her circle, because one of my odd jobs was to do a weekly garden cleanup for her. She pays more than generously, and her garden is an interesting mix, displaying many of her past enthusiasms as well as the plants she is currently involved with.
But her curiosity is exceeded only by her determination to set things right for everyone she cares about. While Amy chattered away about dead people and Bruno Morales and the community garden and Tom Dancey, I waited for Claudia to leap into the whole mess with her usual enthusiasm for detecting, which is accompanied by a touching faith that she can accomplish more than the police, especially Drake, ever could.
She surprised me by saying, when Amy finally sputtered to a halt, “I’m sorry to hear of the deaths. But I’m sure Bruno has it all under control.” She sniffed. “It must drive Drake wild to know that his partner is in charge and he can’t mess it up.”
“Drake doesn’t mess things up. He and Bruno work together to solve cases.” I couldn’t explain why I felt the need to defend Drake. He would have found Claudia’s remark merely funny. What rivalry there is comes strictly from her.
“At any rate, interesting as this turmoil in the garden is, it’s not the reason I came over.” She bent that gaze on me again, the one that turns my knees to jelly and makes me confess even if I didn’t do anything. “Liz, I have reason to believe that Bridget is planning a birthday party for me.” She paused. “A surprise party.”
“As if anyone could plan anything with all this stuff going on.” I turned my back on her to scrub baby beets and carrots.
“You’ve heard nothing about it?” Even without confronting that gimlet stare, I could feel her powerful will reaching out to subject me to mental lie-detector rays. The only defense against this is the blatant sophistry of finding a truthful, even if nonfactual, answer to every question.
“Is today your birthday? I didn’t know.” I’d thought it was Wednesday. At least, that’s what Bridget had said.
“It’s Wednesday,” she said. “I wouldn’t care for a surprise party. If anyone were to give me a birthday party, I would want to look my best, and not like I thought I was going to babysit four rowdy children. And I certainly wouldn’t want any actual numbers mentioned, in terms of my age.”
I didn’t dare look at her. “If Bridget knows it’s your birthday, you’ll get a cake. That’s how she is.”
“She’s asked me to babysit for them. I assumed she’d spring dinner on me at the least. And, of course, a cake.” Claudia came over to the sink to dispose of her apple core in the compost bucket. She leaned against the counter next to me, intent on her goal. “But will there be people other than the Montroses? Will people take idiotic pictures of me dressed in sweatpants and gaping in surprise? Will I need earplugs to avoid being deafened by loud music? Will there be those terrible little hats with elastic that bites into your chins and makes you look like a lunatic? Will I be required to make a witty speech extempore?” She cleared her throat. “That’s the kind of thing I would like to know. I thought you could tell me.”
&nbs
p; The beets demanded all my attention. I scrubbed furiously. “Well, Claudia, follow the Boy Scout motto in this case. Dress nicely, keep your mouth closed, accept no headgear, and think up some non-extempore wit. Then you’ll be ready no matter what happens.”
She nodded once. “I see.”
“Is there going to be a party?” Amy stopped chomping her own apple long enough to ask.
“I will, no doubt, be the last to know.” Claudia turned her formidable attention on Amy. “You are visiting colleges? I know a few people at Santa Clara University and at Stanford. And Berkeley, come to that.” She frowned. “My Berkeley friend in the admissions office is retiring next month, so she won’t be of any use to you. But if you’d like appointments with faculty in any particular school, I might be able to help you. Otherwise it might be difficult to get interviews on the spur of the minute.”
I could see that Amy felt bad for leading Claudia to think her main purpose in visiting was to check out colleges. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d just started in and told Claudia everything. Claudia is the sort of person who can extract your story, no matter how personal, in the minimum amount of time. Since I can’t keep a secret around her, it is a good thing I have so few secrets.
Amy was made of sterner stuff than I thought, however. She thanked Claudia nicely and said she’d welcome any assistance.
“Come over this afternoon,” Claudia said. “After four. I’ll write down some phone numbers for you, and make a couple of calls if I have time. What curricula were you planning to check out?”
“Business school, international relations, and mechanical engineering,” Amy said promptly.
Claudia blinked. “Well, I believe I can help you in a couple of those disciplines.” She moved over to the door. “I know you’re busy, Liz, so I won’t linger. Let me know if you need some help persuading Carlotta to leave you alone. I’m rather good at that sort of thing, if I do say so myself.”