The deck chairs that lined either side of the big pool were all abandoned, and that’s where Donovan headed. He chose a quiet stretch between two potted palms and set his drink on a small circular table. With a groan, he settled down into one of the deck chairs and stretched out, full length. “Sit down,” he told Keegan, nodding at the adjacent deck chair. “Make yourself at home.”
Keegan set his whiskey on the table next to Donovan’s glass and sat down in the empty chair. He was relieved to find it was dry—though the cushions did smell faintly of chlorine and cocoa butter.
Donovan smiled and pulled a couple of cigars from inside his jacket. “Been saving these beauties,” he said. “Top-shelf Cubans. No longer technically legal, perhaps, but who’s going to complain? Got ’em from a client.”
Keegan took the cigar he was offered. He slipped off the label and waited his turn with Donovan’s punch and Zippo lighter.
Before Keegan lit his cigar, Donovan rolled his own cigar between his fingers and sniffed at the wrapper, like the connoisseur he wasn’t. “Fresh from Havana,” he said. He used the punch on one end and then handed the tool across to Keegan. “El Jefe’s own brand.” He lit the cigar, coughed a little, and passed the Zippo over.
The worn lighter had an LAPD shield engraved on one side. It was no doubt a gift back when he’d retired from the force. Keegan hadn’t been invited to that party. He sparked the flame and puffed until his own cigar was lit. He closed the Zippo and set it on the table between the two chairs, next to their whiskey glasses.
Donovan settled back in his chair and took a long, slow draw on his cigar. He looked up at the few stars that dotted the LA sky. “You and me, Jimmy,” he told Keegan wistfully, “we’re a dying breed.”
Keegan could have pointed out that, breed-wise, they were of vastly different pedigrees; Keegan had never been a cop, just a crime reporter. As for dying, Keegan was nearly fifteen years younger than Donovan. Still, this was a good cigar, now that Keegan was tasting it, and this was old Donovan’s send-off, so he’d let the man talk if he wanted to.
“I appreciate the putter,” Donovan went on. “But I won’t be making it out to the golf course. I’m under strict orders to stay off my feet as much as I can.” He held his cigar out in front of him and swept it through the air, indicating the tall swaying palms, the dipping strings of lights, the mild late-summer night. “I tell you, though, buddy,” he said, “I’m going to miss all this.”
Keegan nodded. “I’m sure Arizona has its good points,” he said, though, if pressed, he’d have trouble naming one himself.
Donovan chuckled. Again it trailed off into a rattling cough. He pressed his fist to his sternum. “Tempe may not be hell,” he said, a little out of breath, “but it probably shares the same phone exchange.”
Keegan smiled and let his head fall back against the deck chair’s padding. He looked up at the palm fronds silhouetted against the milky night sky. “So why are you leaving LA, then?” he asked.
Donovan didn’t answer right away, and Keegan looked over to find the man looking back at him, unsmiling.
Donovan turned away and regarded the glassy swimming pool philosophically. “It’s the damn heart, Jimmy,” he said. “It’s bad. Doctor thinks the change in climate might give me another year. Two years if I’m lucky.” He looked back at Keegan and shrugged. “No more drinking or smoking, either.”
Keegan glanced from Donovan’s glowing cigar to the glass on the table next to him and raised an eyebrow.
Donovan shrugged again. “One last hurrah,” he said. He picked up his glass and swung it over to clink against Keegan’s where it sat on the table by his elbow. “After tonight, I’m leading the life of a Baptist.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs, smiling up at the California sky.
Keegan had forgotten how good-natured and jovial Donovan could be. He was good company—just a lousy detective. Sure, they should never have been business partners, but it was a shame they hadn’t spent more time together over the years. Now it was too late.
“Hey,” Keegan said, affecting an upbeat voice, “it’s a good plan, if you ask me. No booze, no tobacco. Who needs them? You’ll live longer.”
Donovan wheezed another laugh. “It’ll only feel longer, without the whiskey and cigars,” he said. He took another toke on his Cuban. He seemed to roll the smoke around on his tongue, savoring it, before he blew it out again.
The two of them sat a few moments in companionable silence, and then the orchestra started up again inside. They were playing ‘Sentimental Journey’, which felt apt. Some of the couples hiding in the shadows rose and went back inside to dance.
Keegan settled back in his deck chair. Out here, the music, muted as it was, was smooth and soothing. Strings of white poolside lights dipped between the palm trees and reflected on the pool’s surface. The lights undulated, as if swaying in time with the distant clarinets. Keegan picked up his whiskey and took a sip.
“I always liked you, Jimmy,” Donovan said, “which is why I’m giving you a parting gift.”
Keegan felt a sudden wariness. He thought of the six-dollar putter he’d brought—now abandoned among all the empty glasses and cocktail napkins on the pushed-together tables inside. “A gift for me?” he said. “This is your party.”
Donovan shook his head and held out a plump, pale hand, palm up. “Just hand over one of your business cards,” he said.
Keegan dipped into his jacket pocket and passed a card over to Donovan. The other man slipped it into his own jacket. “I’m going to pass this along to my new favorite client,” he said. “You’re going to love the old broad.” Donovan picked up his glass and shook it. He looked down into it. It was all melting ice now. Without asking permission, he picked up Keegan’s glass and tipped out a half-shot of whiskey into his own glass.
“I’ve kept the old girl under covers so far,” he went on. “But she’s a dream, Jimbo. She’s old and paranoid and richer than Jesus.”
“You mean ‘Croesus’?”
“Huh?”
“The saying,” Keegan explained. “It’s ‘Richer than Croesus.’ I’m pretty sure Jesus was dirt poor.”
Donovan took a sip of his stolen whiskey and eyed Keegan drolly—like this was part of their well-worn shtick. “Whatever you say, professor,” he said with an eye roll. “I’m just telling you the old lady’s rolling in it.”
“Duly noted,” Keegan said.
“And, get this, Jimmy,” Donovan said. “She insists on paying cash for everything, so there won’t be a paper trail. She won’t even let you write her out a receipt.” He grinned over at Keegan. “The IRS don’t need to know a thing.” He reached over and tapped an inch of ash from his cigar onto the concrete between them. “Ida Fletcher is her name, and she’s all yours now, buddy.” He gave his jacket a pat to let Keegan know he’d be passing along the business card. “When she calls, pick up,” he said. “You won’t be sorry.”
KEEGAN DROVE PAST the last dark turnoff and kept climbing the incline in low gear. His watch told him it was well after ten. The smoke from Donovan’s Cuban cigars still lingered in the folds of his shirt.
From this point on, the paved public road Keegan drove along might as well have been his own personal driveway. No one used this stretch of asphalt but him. His hilltop cottage was the only place it led to. Fifty yards beyond his own carport, the road dead-ended at an old wooden barricade that was studded with reflectors. END OF ROAD, the battered sign read. Lately, the words had begun to ring in Keegan’s head like a symbol of something. Maybe Mrs. Dodd was right: a man his age shouldn’t let himself be so isolated. It wasn’t healthy.
When he pulled up through the last curve, he braked. A scrawny coyote, tail tucked low, stood in the center of the road facing away from him. It had been heading uphill too, but it looked back over its shoulder now, unruffled. Keegan’s headlights reflected in its coppery eyes.
Coyotes were common in these hills. Their moon-drunk yipping at night was no
more unusual than a cricket’s chirp. There were bobcats up here too—even a few mountain lions. Keegan spotted one of the big cats every year or so, slinking back into the oak-dotted ravines in the first light of dawn.
Without any evident alarm, the coyote in Keegan’s headlights trotted to the road’s edge and disappeared into the brush. Keegan eased his foot off the clutch, his headlight sweeping across the wild sage at the road’s edge. Up on the last stretch, his cottage came into view, a few dim lights hunkered down in all that velvety darkness. He was home.
As he came up the porch steps, he could hear Nora, his Welsh Terrier, scratching at the front door’s baseboard. She wasn’t used to him being out so late, and she’d been cooped up inside since he’d brought her home from work. He turned the key in the lock, pushed the door open, and she was up on him, jumping and whimpering, quivering with excitement to see him. He went inside and closed the door behind them. The dog darted through the dark kitchen, to the back door. Before Keegan let her out, he put some ice in a glass and poured himself a Jameson at the kitchen counter. With the coyote around, he’d have to go outside with the dog.
When he opened the door, Nora rocketed down the back steps into the garden. She went to her usual corner between two rosemary bushes to do her business. Keegan turned on the back porchlight and took his drink over to the edge of the hillside. The bright city lights sprawled below him. They shimmered—ruby red and diamond white—all the way to the dark abyss of the Pacific.
This cottage had belonged to his family long before the mansions had arrived to fill up the hillsides below. He’d inherited the place—along with the dog—when his mother died. The land was worth a not-so-small fortune these days, but Keegan couldn’t bring himself to let go of it just yet. It had been in the family too long, and, at this point, he’d rather have the view than the money.
Directly below his cottage was the old Ormsby place, a rambling lot with a big house, a pool, and a sprawling garden. It had been dark and empty for a year now, a nightly reminder of Keegan’s most recent failure. A young woman, Eve Ormsby-Cutler, had briefly lived down there. She’d trusted Keegan, and she’d died because that trust was misplaced. And now her family’s big house was dark and empty—a haunted borderland that lay between Keegan and the rest of the living world.
I feel bad about how it all played out, the Lieutenant had told him tonight outside the Cocoanut Grove. The words had rung pathetic and cavalier in Keegan’s ears, wholly inadequate to describe the tragedy the two men had brought about. Keegan downed the rest of his whiskey in one gulp and turned his back on the view.
“Come on, girl,” he said to the dog.
She sniffed the air one last time and the two of them headed back toward the welcoming porchlight and the lit windows of their little home.
LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT, Keegan was jolted from sleep. He sat up on the bed groggily. The dog was out in the living room again, barking. She’d been doing this for weeks now, every few nights: these bouts of late-night urgent yapping. For reasons Keegan couldn’t pinpoint, the poor thing had grown skittish. She bristled and cowered at imagined threats that were entirely invisible to Keegan. Tonight, when he stumbled out to the living room, barefoot and only half awake, Keegan found her standing beside the coffee table, hackles raised, head bent low, growling at the big, empty easy chair. A blanket lay strewn across it. One corner dangled down over the chair’s arms. The dog had probably taken that dark, amorphous shape to be an intruder.
Keegan switched on the floor lamp next to the doorway. In the sudden light, the blue blanket leapt out of the darkness to become the harmless thing it was.
“See,” Keegan told the dog, “it’s just an old blanket. Nothing to it.”
The dog stopped growling, but she backed warily away from the chair, hackles still raised. She turned and darted back into the bedroom.
Mrs. Dodd had once informed Keegan that dogs could see ghosts. They had been leaving the office for the day, and Nora, for no earthy reason, had refused to get on the left-hand elevator. “They’re more attuned to the spiritual world than we are,” Mrs. Dodd had said. She spoke the words with such assurance, such offhand authority, that Keegan hadn’t thought to ask why a ghost would need an elevator or which floor it might be riding to. Keegan had just waited there in the hallway until the bell chimed for the other elevator. The doors opened, the dog boarded without complaint, and the three of them rode down to the lobby in silence.
Now, in his well-lit living room, Keegan paused with his fingers on the lamp’s switch. He couldn’t remember bringing out the blue blanket. It hadn’t been cold enough at night to need one. Still, who else could have done it? He went over and picked it up. He folded it and set it on the end of his mother’s old settee and looked at the empty easy chair.
One night, not that long ago, Eve had sat in that very spot when she had visited him with a bottle of good wine, stolen from her uncle’s cellar. They had laughed and flirted and gotten tipsy together, both of them happily blind to all the anguish that lay just ahead of them. She had kissed him that night, at the doorway of the big empty estate down the hill. Lieutenant Moore might be able to brush off such tragedies, but Keegan wasn’t up to it.
When he got back to the bedroom, Nora was curled up at the foot of the mattress, already asleep again. Keegan lay back down on the bed and pulled the covers over himself, but his heart was beating so fast he knew he wouldn’t sleep.
CHAPTER TWO
ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, Keegan had the Dodgers game on the radio he kept atop the file cabinets. All told, it had been a stellar season for LA; the Dodgers had finished six games ahead of St. Louis, and now they were facing the Yankees in Game One of the World Series. When the phone in the outer office rang, it was the fifth inning, and the Dodgers had a five-run lead. Keegan wouldn’t take the call. Not now. Not in the middle of a game. The old lady could leave another message. He’d call her back in the morning before Game Two.
Since Monday, Mrs. Dodd had jotted down three urgent messages from Ida Fletcher—Donovan’s favorite client, the woman who was richer than Jesus. But each time a call had come in, Keegan couldn’t bring himself to take it.
“SHE SOUNDS HARMLESS,” Mrs. Dodd told him when she was packing up her purse to go home that afternoon. She was leaving an hour early—something about one of her grandkids and a dental appointment. “Who cares if she’s a bit crazy?” she said. “All that matters is that her checks clear.”
“According to Donovan, she only pays cash,” Keegan said.
“That’s even better,” Mrs. Dodd told him. She stood up from her desk and looked around to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything. “Have you even looked at the books this month?” she said. “You’ll be going into the red just to pay me and keep the lights on.” She straightened up and fixed him with one of her looks. “And you will be paying me,” she said. She lifted her purse off the desk by its strap. “Some old lady’s cash is exactly what we need. I don’t know why you’re avoiding her.”
She was right, of course: they did need the money, and Keegan had been avoiding Ida Fletcher’s phone calls. “I’ve just got a feeling the old lady will be more trouble than she’s worth,” he said. “I’m not very good with crazy people.”
“You’re not good with people, period,” Mrs. Dodd told him, which stung a little, though Keegan had to admit it was fair. Mrs. Dodd took her coat from the rack by the door and pulled it on. “Besides, you need something to keep yourself busy.”
“That again?” Keegan said.
Mrs. Dodd shook her head wearily, like Keegan was being willfully obtuse. “It’s been more than a year since the girl died,” she told him. Her words were blunt. She was clearly done tiptoeing around the subject. “It’s time to let go and move on.” She slung her purse over her shoulder and went to the door. “Get out of the house, boss.” She didn’t turn to look at him. “Have a drink with somebody. Go see a movie.” She put her hand on the doorknob and looked down at Nora, who had trotted
after her, wagging her tail.
The dog seemed to think she was going home for the day too.
“Me and a Welsh Terrier,” Mrs. Dodd said. “We’re your only company.” She gave the dog a rueful smile, her hand still on the doorknob. “It isn’t fair to us, is it?” she said to the dog, her voice all singsong. “Someone else needs to share the burden.”
The worst thing about all Mrs. Dodd’s nagging was that Keegan knew she was right. He was spending an unhealthy amount of time on his own. “Maybe I’ll go to a baseball game,” he told her, though she was out in the hall now, trying to keep the dog from following her out.
“That would be a step in the right direction,” she told him. She pushed the dog back inside with her foot. “Go buy yourself a ticket,” she said as she pulled the door shut.
A FEW MINUTES later, Keegan fastened the leash on Nora’s collar and led her out to the sixth-floor hallway. He was still feeling good from the Dodgers win. He pushed the button to summon the elevator, and the haunted elevator, the one on the left, arrived first. The bell dinged and the doors slid open. He looked down at the dog. She sniffed at the elevator’s interior—it was empty, but someone had been smoking a cigar—and then boarded it without objection. Today, the ghost had apparently taken the stairs.
Down on the street, the two of them walked along Sixth and waited at the corner for the light to change. He found an empty bench in Pershing Square near the lawn and let the dog off the leash to chase a few birds before they called it a day and went home.
Here, in the park, the sun still reached the trees’ bare upper branches, and they were lacquered golden in the light. It was late afternoon, Keegan’s favorite time of day in the city, just before the workday ended and the streets filled with traffic. And it was October, Keegan’s favorite month, when the leaves fell and the weather cooled and baseball season wrapped up. He liked the nip in the air and the slow build-up to Halloween. He stretched out his legs and interlaced his fingers behind his head. The dog ran back and forth to him across the grass.
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