“I’ll send it on Monday.”
“Don’t wait. Do it right away,” he said. “As your attorney, I advise you to get this one out of your hair immediately.”
She opened her side drawer, looked at the checks, shut it, and opened it again. “Okay, Jack,” she said, angry. She should never have mentioned that she was waiting to courier the checks. That had been an unconscious slip, a desire to get his stamp of approval. Predictably, he had picked up on her delaying strategy. He knew her too well. He didn’t want to know why she wanted to put it off, he didn’t want justifications, he just wanted a clean slate. Was this what it meant, having an attorney? Taking unwelcome advice? Doing things that made you queasy?
Yes. She put the checks on her desk. She would get them on the road before she left today, like an intelligent client following the expert advice of her attorney over her own instincts.
“The sisters. Brandy and Angel,” Jack said. “There’s more exposure. This suspect, what’s his name, Stinson, assaulted the girls on the beach. An argument can be made that Cody heard from the possessor of the files that the girls saw things. But who knows why Cody got on ’em? Maybe some other camper told him something. I can’t see a complaint from them going anywhere.”
“I know the timing makes it look that way. But let’s just stop right here. Listen, Jack. I want you to tell me what you really think. Did the theft of my files cause these innocent people to be threatened?”
Jack gave his answer some thought. No lawyer likes to tell what he really thinks. “Frankly, I don’t believe it. I think old Cody found out some other way, from a fellow camper, maybe. I think Kevin Cruz’s wife found out about Cruz’s girlfriend on her own, too. And I see no evidence any outsider has made any mischief in the Vang case.”
“You’re not just trying to make me feel better?”
“I think you can rest easy. I don’t mean that. Don’t rest easy. Be vigilant. Take care of business. But I don’t believe you’re being set up. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stay in close touch with me. Every lawyer in California ought to be in close touch with me. You’re all gonna get complaints sooner or later.”
“But not this time.”
“It’ll fade. You lost some files. You had to run around. There was worry, but nothing is gonna develop. You know what Mark Twain said. ‘I’ve been through some awful worries, and some of them actually happened.’ ”
His tone comforted her. He always could comfort her. She had always relied on his strength, his assuredness. “Thanks,” she said. “It’s a relief to hear you say that.” She wanted to believe him.
“Only the Cruz case is still a concern. We’ll stay on it. We should get together and have dinner alone sometime, Nina.”
“What for?”
“What for? You have to ask? We’re old friends back in touch, aren’t we?”
“Ex-spouses back in touch,” Nina said. “There’s a world of difference.”
“Let’s erase that old garbage, okay? We’re past that now. Let’s not discuss it again. I’m curious about your life, how you’re getting along. I’d like to see old Bob. How about if I come up on the weekend? We’ll go for a bike ride.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’ll be astonished how much fun we can have. Come on. Don’t be that way.”
“Jack-”
“Is Paul jealous of me? Because obviously he has no reason to be jealous,” Jack said, sounding irritated. “I think I’ve made that clear.”
This jarred her, and she thought, I also remember how he used to drive me crazy, cutting from one emotion to the other like now, confusing me, never really listening. All she said was, “Gotta go.”
She left the office and drove home, thinking about the men passing through her life. Kurt Scott, Bob’s father. Jack. Collier Hallowell, her husband for a very short time. Paul. All of them incomprehensible, when you looked deep. Every one so alike on the surface, so impossibly complex within.
What does Jack want with me? she wondered. To get my defenses down, then take revenge? Show me what I missed because we broke up? Wile his way back into my heart for sport?
17
L YING IN BED at the Menlo Park Inn early on Friday morning, forty miles south of San Francisco, half-dreaming, Paul came to a conclusion. He had reached that sensitive state in which a man has to do what a man has to do. An entire workweek had passed, five days, and he and Nina had met like professional cohorts, on courthouse cement, in offices, in rapid-fire telephone conversations that did not contain his preferred content and did not usually end in a satisfying manner.
His frustration was not bearable and, worse, was not necessary. He needed to touch her, to hold her, to smell her shampoo. He needed to see her tonight and convince her to love him forever, to marry him, to run away with him, to make a life with him. He wanted to make love with her and open up a new universe.
To start with, he opened an eye.
To cartoons. Rocky, high-pitched voice of reason, and Bullwinkle, idiot savant, cavorted through an episode loaded with Cold War innuendo three feet away.
“Turn it off,” he told Wish distinctly. He might have to share a room, but by God, he would not watch cartoons first thing in the morning.
“Okay,” Wish said, wandering off toward the bathroom, toothbrush foaming in his mouth, the television untouched.
In this episode, Boris once again plotted Rocky’s downfall. He knew who held the real power. Natasha, as always, went balefully along. Paul pulled a pillow over his head, otherwise powerless to resist. He and his sister used to watch this same cartoon. She played Natasha and he was always Rocky, the intelligent do-gooder, although something perverse in him identified more closely with Boris. “I said turn it off,” he shouted through the flimsy brown door.
“Uh, okay,” said Wish, returning clean-shaven and freshly scented to press a button on the remote.
After Paul took his turn in the bathroom, they asked at the reception desk for a recommendation and ended up at Ann’s Coffee Shop on Santa Cruz Avenue for breakfast.
“So old-fashioned,” Wish pronounced, lighting into an impressive pile of pancakes. “People don’t hardly eat like this anymore.”
“No, they don’t,” Paul said, making headway through his plate of deliciously greasy potatoes and eggs.
“Great to get a decent night’s sleep for a change,” Wish said, yawning. “Remind me again why we had to go rushing off to Palo Alto instead of back to Tahoe last night?”
“To find Brandy’s boyfriend,” Paul said.
Spearing a pie-shaped chunk, Wish nodded. “I guess over the weekend I’ll have time to make up some assignments before next week starts.”
Paul grunted, not knowing. Of course, Wish’s classes were important, but what came first for him was the current pressing issue of the day: Bruce Ford, fiance manque.
“Where are we meeting Brandy?”
Did Paul imagine it, or did Wish’s ears seem redder than usual?
“I told her we’d meet her on University Avenue. Her boyfriend works near there.”
Wish had never, in the two or three years Paul had known him, shown anything but enthusiastic curiosity for any subject at hand. This time, Wish frowned. “You think we’ll find him?”
“That’s the plan.”
Wish sipped orange juice. “Yeah.”
“Funny,” Paul said. “I get the impression maybe you don’t want to find him?”
“Yeah.”
“Brandy is pretty, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.”
They paid for their breakfast and went out into the warm fall weather, directing the car toward Palo Alto, the next town over. “Why couldn’t we stay there?” groused Wish as they passed the grand, landscaped Stanford Park Hotel. “Too expensive?”
“Full,” Paul said. “Some name-brand politician is giving a lecture at Stanford.”
“Oh.”
“Plus Brandy said Bruce’s mother always stayed where we stayed and that maybe Bruce Ford would think of the place. Too bad we didn’t get to try the Hotel California over on California.” Wish’s oblivious reaction to the suggestion told Paul that he did not even know the song. Paul remembered that Wish was twenty and he was twice that. His good mood evaporated.
“So did you talk to the manager at the inn?” Wish asked.
“I did. No sign of Bruce. He said he’d get in touch if he saw him.”
They made a left off El Camino onto University and drove down the tree-lined street until they crossed over Hamilton and parked. They walked south until they came to a three-story building that looked like a church. Wish checked the address, nodded, and in they went.
Brandy sat on a concrete bench near the pebbled stone entryway. She stood up to meet them, all pink and cream and gentle languor. “Bruce wasn’t at home, and I already checked his office,” she said. “He isn’t there either. By the way, thanks for coming.” She seemed subdued.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Can we see his office?”
“Okay.” They took an elevator to the fourth floor. Bruce Ford shared a receptionist with four other loosely associated professionals. The receptionist hadn’t seen him in days and had nothing more to report than that “a man came by” before Bruce left. As to the identity of this man, she couldn’t say. She described him as “rough” looking, a description that certainly fit Cody Stinson.
“What exactly does your boyfriend do?” Paul asked as they walked the long hall toward a front office.
Brandy sighed hard. “Didn’t you know? He’s a tax lawyer.” Sticking a key into the lock, she swung the door open.
A flatscape of houses with the San Francisco Bay beyond unfolded outside Ford’s office window. A walnut desk piled with folders sat in front of the wide window, waiting to be rifled. Brandy went to a small photo on the desk and showed it to Paul and Wish. “Our engagement party.” She had worn pink. He had worn a white tux. The man, who was much taller than Brandy, had curly black hair, too long for someone in serious business, and grinned like a winner. His hair blew out in strawlike tendrils from under the breezy arbor.
“Look wherever you want,” Brandy said. She sat down on a chair across from the desk. “I don’t expect you to find much. Bruce is careful.”
Paul started on the tabletop while Wish picked through the contents of the drawers. While Brandy sighed and stretched, Wish’s eyes straying her way every minute or two, they conducted a thoroughly professional search of the office.
In the bottom right-hand drawer, exactly where you might expect to find it, Wish unearthed a day diary and started to read it out loud, but as Brandy’s brows furrowed, Paul took it away from him and shut it. “We have what we need. Let’s see where your boyfriend has gone.”
“My fiance,” Brandy corrected, looking conflicted. “We’re supposed to get married in June.”
“Right,” Paul said, tucking the photograph of Brandy and Bruce into his pocket.
He let Wish slip a picture of Brandy from the credenza into his pocket without remark. In the photo, she wore a demure red bathing suit, not a bikini, but the effect was obviously irresistible. Well, what harm could it do? Wherever Bruce was, he didn’t care at the moment, and neither did Paul.
