Unfit to Practice

“They were in on a drug deal together and Cody held the money for Mario while he was in prison,” Brandy said.

“Taking the rap, I think,” said Angel.

“So Mario asks, ‘Well, then, where the hell can I go?’ ’Cause you have to remember, he’s got practically no money,” Brandy added.

“So then Cody gives him twenty bucks or so and sends Mario to the campground with a ratty old tent and a bag. Some friend.”

“Meanwhile, guess who’s listening from somewhere behind the drapes?” Brandy asked rhetorically.

“Mario’s old girlfriend, Phoebe, who’s actually been missing him or maybe is just getting very sick of Cody, his second-rate stand-in,” said Angel. “Mario was definitely the better-looking one.”

“So Phoebe sneaks out and follows Mario to the campground. And initiates a rowdy reunion. If she’d only known. It’s so awful. I guess that’s what those other people who had our campsite before really objected to. Probably they were hanging all over each other,” Brandy said.

“Indiscreet,” Angel agreed.

“So Cody-he came back late at night. And he killed her! Angel, should we really do this?”

“It’s for the best, Bran.”

They fell silent, both with one arm folded, the other resting under a chin.

Paul turned up Al Tahoe, intrigued and moved by these two young women. Telling the story lightened their emotional load. Nina, the amateur psychologist, would probably say their reworking of these memories helped them to gain control over their fear. And then there was the relationship between them. They were like children of exactly equal weight on a teeter-totter, shifting back and forth in perfect harmony. He sighed, thinking of his own sister in San Francisco. The last time he saw her, he had been in the hospital with a broken leg. The moment he regained full consciousness and saw her there at the foot of his bed, all he could think about was how to send her scurrying home.

“Then Cody showed up,” Paul said, prompting them.

“He’s got this shattering motorcycle engine. I mean, you couldn’t hear a china cupboard collapse over the noise of that thing,” Brandy said.

“Or a house fall down, for that matter,” Angel added.

“A Harley,” Wish said. “Or maybe Kawasaki? They make some really powerful engines.”

Brandy, sitting next to him, seemed startled at this sudden show of interest. “Who knows?” she said. “Just really loud.”

“Cody hops off the bike,” Angel said, “and the fighting starts. He’s really pissed about Phoebe. He says she’s already jumped in the sack with Mario, hasn’t she?”

“Which is literally the truth,” said Brandy. “I always wondered if those double bags were roomy enough.”

“Mario says, ‘F-off! She was mine before and she’ll always be mine. And by the F-ing way, where the F is my mother-F-ing money?’ ”

Paul stifled a laugh. Mario’s language had even the bold Angel cringing.

“So they got into a fistfight, and I called the ranger and the ranger came and ran Cody off,” Brandy finished suddenly. “That’s the whole story.”

“Except that Cody came back and strangled Phoebe,” Angel said.

This time, no amount of prompting could lift the sisters out of their silent funk.

They found Nina leaning against her Bronco in the parking lot at the county offices. She went into the D.A.’s office with Brandy and Angel while Wish and Paul waited outside for a long time.

When the women returned, Angel looked wrung out down to the ends of her bleached hairdo. Brandy had lapsed into introspective gloom. Nina had a court appearance in another fifteen minutes in the building across from the D.A.’s office.

“We have lined up a place for you two to go that’s safe,” Nina said.

“What?” Brandy said. “I thought you guys said talking to the D.A. was our insurance.”

“This is just intensive short-term protection,” Paul said smoothly. “The D.A.’s office agrees it’s a good move.”

“We’d like you to move into a shelter operated by my sister-in-law, Andrea Reilly, at least for tonight,” Nina said. “The location is kept very private. They have excellent security, and it’s just the spot for you two until the police can arrest Cody Stinson. It’s my advice that you go there immediately. They have everything you need for an overnight stay.”

“Forget that,” Angel said. “I’m sleeping in my own bed tonight. We’ll bar the door. Sam’s still out of town with the kids, so they’re all safe, and I am so tired of running around. We’ll be fine at my house.” She shook her head and twisted her mouth at the thought. “We’re not going to some icky place for abused women!”

“You hired me for advice. Now take it,” Nina said firmly. “This is a good, clean place with some wonderful professional people who know how to make you feel comfortable in addition to providing security you need. As long as Cody Stinson is out there, there may be danger for you both. The district attorney’s office has placed people at the shelter before.”

“No.” Brandy folded her arms. Angel followed suit.

Nina and Paul both argued hard, but in the end, the two women, armed with their elbows and stony expressions, formed an impervious blockade against all imprecations.

When Nina had to leave, Paul and Wish offered to take Angel and Brandy back to the salon. Angel announced that she was ready to call it quits for the day. She and Brandy wanted a ride back to the Harveys parking lot to pick up Angel’s car, then they planned to head straight back to Angel’s cabin. Subdued, they said little about their meeting with the D.A. other than to report that he seemed like a fair man who believed them and now would go out and get Cody Stinson and lock his butt up.

With that hopeful analysis behind them, they clammed up. Wish rose to the occasion, suddenly voluble on several topics, beginning with motorcycle lore, skipping to detective lore, finally landing upon hip-hop music, which sparked some interest.

Paul dropped the sisters at the casino and drove around the corner. A few moments later he watched the two jump into Angel’s car. The women drove off into the late-afternoon traffic. Paul followed behind a couple of cars.

“We’ll escort them safely home,” Paul said. “I’m thinking we’ll sit on their curb tonight.”

“Well, sure. They’re in danger.”

The sisters passed the turnoff at Al Tahoe that would lead to Pioneer Trail. At the Y intersection, Angel swung the Echo right. Brandy held a small purple mobile phone to her ear. Holding tight with one hand to the oh-shit bar above the door to keep herself steady against Angel’s erratic driving style, she talked. Since Paul knew she lived on Blackfoot Avenue about two miles west of Nina’s, he also knew that they were not, as advertised, going directly back to Angel’s.

At Camp Richardson, the Echo swerved right. Paul narrowly avoided missing the entrance. The dapper little car jaunted all the way to the end of the narrow camp road, past the one-room cabins lining it, and stopped in a marked spot at the end where the asphalt broadened. Paul and Wish followed a few seconds later.

The girls had landed at the Beacon Bar and Grill. Paul heard them ordering espressos while he and Wish hunted for a table where they could observe without being noticed. They ordered iced tea, which arrived in wet, cold glasses. Wish busied himself with a multitude of sugar packets while Paul squeezed his lemon slice.

At this late hour, Lake Tahoe rippled in a steady breeze. Gulls coasted above. Even the narrow stretch of beach sand wore a glaze of tiny airborne granules. Umbrellas above the tables adjusted dangerously. Behind Mount Tallac the sun slipped low and the sky shifted from azure to indigo. The wind hushed, bringing that moment of quiet before the onset of evening.

The girls packed away two hot drinks each rather quickly, checked their watches for the time, and with what must have been a zinging buzz, left a pile of one-dollar bills on the table and set off down the beach at a near run. Paul and Wish established a slightly more leisurely pace but stayed close. “Getting some exercise,” Wish guessed, “staying fit.”

“They’re meeting someone.”

“Ah. The phone call. The time.”

“Right.”

The sisters walked west toward Kiva Beach, passed by a succession of joggers and bikes until Beach Road ended, then entered that sparser realm just a few steps past all public areas where only the intrepid ventured. Trees crept closer to the edge of the water, their long shadows casting triangles, blotting the beach.

“Who could they be meeting?”

“If I were to guess,” Paul said, “I’d say Brandy’s boyfriend, Bruce, is supposed to appear.”

The women stopped suddenly, turned away from the lake, then stepped into a black patch of shade and ducked into the woods.

“You don’t think he will?”

“Damn!” Paul said, breaking into a trot, then a run as a shout, then a scream rode toward them.

“Wish and Paul saved our lives,” Brandy said, sobbing in Nina’s office a half hour later. Nina had stayed late after receiving Paul’s urgent call. “If they hadn’t happened to be walking along the beach at the same exact time-”

Angel put a hand on her sister’s head. “Bran, wake up, they didn’t happen to be there.” She looked up at Paul. “You followed us.”

“Exactly what happened?” Nina asked.

“Brandy got a phone call while we were going home from a guy that said he was a friend of Bruce’s, that he had asked this guy to call and let Brandy know he would meet her at Kiva Beach at a certain time.”

“You weren’t suspicious?” Nina asked.

“Of Bruce? He didn’t have his cell phone. That’s unusual, but not impossible. And I always thought he might follow Bran up here.”

“Why the beach?”

“He said he wanted a quiet spot for them to talk. It’s a public place, you know,” Angel said. “I wasn’t about to let her go alone, even though she told me not to come.”

“We walked along the beach,” Brandy said, “then we heard someone calling us from the trees. It was windy-not like you could identify a voice. Anyway, even if it hadn’t been Bruce’s voice, when someone says, ‘Over here,’ you go over there.”

Paul coughed and shook his head in the direction of the floor.

“And he leaped out at us like-like a rabid dog,” Brandy finished, “a wild creature. Angel tried to jump him, so he knocked her down right away, the entire time just jabbering. I screamed and tried to fight him. He grabbed me from behind but before he could do anything else, Wish and Paul ran up and pulled him off me. I-I-”

“She was screaming her head off,” Angel said. “So was I. Paul wanted to know were we okay, but it took us a minute to realize there was no blood anywhere on us. Not even a nick. We were so lucky.”

“That wasn’t luck,” Brandy said. “Wish and Paul being there wasn’t luck at all.”

“He got away,” Paul said, and a world of disappointment underlaid his words.

“You recognized him?”

Paul nodded. “Same as the guy in the paper, Cody Stinson.”

Wish said matter-of-factly, “It was definitely a Harley chopper. Heard it first, and glimpsed him taking off.”

“I tried to get them to see a doctor but they refused. We have agreed they’ll spend the night at the women’s shelter. They wanted to come here first,” Paul said.

“Yes,” said Angel, turning her attention back to Nina, “because any way you look at it, Cody would never have come after us if you hadn’t lost that file.”