Presumption Of Death

“What do you think, Debbie?” Nina said.

“About who might have six grand on this street? Don’t ask me. I wouldn’t know.”

“Aw, come on, Deb,” Britta said. “Every single person on this block has cried on your shoulder. You know. Tell them, go ahead.” What could have been a compliment from someone else had a sharp edge to it coming from Britta.

“Well, you and David come to mind,” Debbie said. Nina thought, So there’s some life in her yet.

Britta wasn’t bothered by this sally. She said, “Absolutely. Except David has the money, not me. I get my allowance and I get my paycheck. But now David, he’s got a trust fund from his parents that would knock your socks off, Paul. Yes, maybe it’s him. Maybe he’s gone political and decided to be the closet savior of the neighborhood. It’s completely out of character, him being heroic or spending that kind of money on anything that doesn’t have the syllables optic in it somewhere, I have to say.”

“You say those things about your own husband?” Debbie broke in.

“Maybe I did it,” Britta said. “Broke into the trust funds.” She was busy pouring herself another margarita.

“Why would you?” Nina asked.

“Same reason as everyone else on this block. Because I don’t want my view wrecked. To save the neighborhood, you could say. I’m a real nature lover.” She had added salt to the rim of the glass this time. She licked it off.

“Who else might have money?” Paul said.

“Ted and Megan have some money socked away, I’d guess,” Debbie said, clearly unhappy with the whole line of speculation. “I don’t really know. I really don’t see how Darryl and Tory could have that much money with four kids on the money Darryl takes home.”

“How about you and Sam?” said Britta. “Sam makes good money, enough so you don’t even have to work.”

“You know, Britta, maybe you better watch yourself,” Debbie said, “making those kinds of accusations while you’re sitting on our deck drinking our booze.” She had become increasingly uneasy. Nina couldn’t understand why she didn’t throw Britta, who had leapt upon her husband with the abandon of a wild animal a few nights before, out. Here she was letting Britta get homey on her deck, acting unreasonably civil. Evidently, Debbie worked to keep the social peace at all costs.

The kitchen door opened with a crash. Sam Puglia looked out at them, thick eyebrows drawing together like dark storm clouds. “You should have waited for me,” he told Debbie.

“I’m sorry, Sam.”

“Hi, Sammy,” Britta said. “I just dropped by.”

“You dropped by, now you go home,” Sam said. “I mean it.”

“Sure you do.” Steadying herself with a hand on the back of the chair, Britta stood up. “See you later, everybody.” She passed close by Sam, brushing him.

After Britta left, Sam said, “What’ve you been telling them, Debbie?”

“That we had nothing to do with it.”

He relaxed slightly. “’Course we didn’t. What’s in the pitcher?”

“You know.”

Debbie poured him a margarita. Victims of a common marital curse, Sam and Debbie no longer looked the same age. After twenty years these partners now represented different generations. Debbie’s hair, almost gray, blew in a frizz cloud around her head. She bore a worried air and tired look around the eyes when she wasn’t acting the hearty hostess. Sam’s hair remained black and plentiful. The cracks time had etched into his face gave him vigor and character. A deceptive look of character, Nina thought, correcting herself. She would never forgive Sam for letting Britta-letting Britta sit on him! All right, as awful as it was, it was funny too. The two participants might not even remember the event, but Nina would swear Debbie had heard all about it.

From the way Sam had just tossed Britta out like rotten meat, Sam must remember plenty too, come to think of it.

“You’re a lawyer?” he said to Nina. “And you’re a P.I.?” To Paul.

They nodded.

“What do you want from us?”

“We’d like to know how well you knew Danny.”

“Why?”

“Oh, Sam, don’t make a big deal out of this,” Debbie told him. “Danny was our neighbor, and he helped Sam with the car, and he hung curtains for me.”

“You would have adopted him if I let you,” Sam said.

“Not really. He was already a man, but he was very lonely and I think it did him a world of good to be part of our little community.”

“He was an outsider here and always would be,” Sam said. “He could try to fit in until the cows came home, he never would.”

“How did he feel about the development across the street?” Paul asked them both.

Sam just sucked on his margarita straw, so Debbie said, “He hated it as much as any of us, I guess.”

“Did he ever talk about the cafe fire?”

“Not that I recall,” Debbie said.

“He might have had a grudge going there, don’t you think, Sam?” Paul said.

“I got nothing to say,” Sam told him.

“You have a lot to say, I think,” Nina said. “About all this. What’s scaring you so much?”

“Fuck you,” Sam said in response. His face had turned white and he was shaking. Paul set down his glass hard, scraping the glass table.

“Sam!” Debbie said. She put her hand on his arm.

“Come to my house, my neighborhood, accuse us all of whatever evilness. We’re just trying to get along down here in the woods. Ruthie was as crazy as a rabid coon. She didn’t see squat get out of a car on this street.”

“Mr. Puglia, have you made a withdrawal in the last two months out of any account in the amount of sixty-two hundred fifty dollars?” Paul said. His voice had hardened.

Sam said, “No, I fucking haven’t, and neither has my wife. My wife and I love each other. We pay our taxes and our kids’ tuition. We support our president and we love our God. And we’re not criminals. Now, get offa my property.”

Paul stood up, chest sticking out, hands balled into fists. Nina got up too, hastily, to step in front of him. “Thanks for the margaritas,” she said to Debbie.

“You’re welcome.”

“We’ll be going.”

Paul and Sam stood eyeball-to-eyeball.

“Right, Paul? We have to go now.”

Paul moved back a step. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

Releasing his eyes from their deadlock, Sam turned his back on them and sucked on his drink. Nina led Paul to the gate.

“Good-bye,” she said to Debbie.

“Have a nice day,” Debbie said.

Nina and Paul walked across the street to the riprap and looked down at the trickle of river, aware of eyes on them. “Debbie’s on the phone,” Paul said. “Sam’s at the back fence, jabbering at Darryl.”

“You behaved well,” Nina said.

“His turf,” Paul said. “I wasn’t going to start anything.”

“Let’s see what shard of human heart comes flying out of the explosion.”

“Well said. I need food to balance the tequila.”

“There’s an Italian place in the Village not three blocks from here.”

“Let’s go.”

They returned to the Mustang and left Siesta Court. At dinner Paul said, “Are we any closer to finding out who the children are? The children Nate talked about.”

“It has to be one or more of the Siesta Court kids.”

“We don’t know that. Could be some other scam, some other kids.”

“That’s my feeling.”

“You and your feelings.”

Nina thought of Britta’s little towheaded boys, Darryl’s handsome boy Mikey. Callie and April, the apples of Jolene’s eye.

“But if it’s the neighbor kids, why?” she said. “Why?”

23

M EGAN CAME IN LATE FROM HER martial-arts lesson about seven-thirty. Ted had already done his stretches and was lounging in the hot tub outside. Starving, she hunted around for whatever he had made for dinner, but all she could find was a dry chicken breast.

He hadn’t left her any dinner. He was sulking.

In six years, they had built a home, biked from L.A. to San Francisco, run a marathon together, traveled to Acapulco and Hawaii, invested their money and gotten rich, gone through his father’s death and her brother’s divorce, and generally supported each other to the megamax. Ted was more than a husband, he was her boon companion, that was how she liked to think of him. They were a modern family of two, tight, permanent.

And now this. This choking incident. And Ted’s lack of interest in sex.

They were extremely competent people with resources. These were just maintenance problems, like the sim card in the cell phone dying, or the sink stopping up.

Munching on the chicken, she went downstairs and onto their private deck. In the long last rays of the sun, Ted floated with his eyes closed, his arms hooked onto the tub wall out of the water to keep himself cooler. Next to him on the deck, the laptop showed the Yahoo finance screen.