'Saw me where?'
'At the house. She spotted the main fire and called the county fire camp. They were already on it. Still, eight houses burned to the ground.'
'Nine,' Robin said.
'She saw your car, too, the Mercedes convertible?'
'Yeah, as soon as it came on the news I got dressed, jumped in the car . . .'
'But why the convertible?'
'Why not?'
'If you were going there to save some more of your stuff, and it might be your only chance . . . Don't you have a Range Rover?'
'I was thinking about the house, ' Robin said. 'I wanted to find out if it was still there. I'd already picked up my jewelry, moved out most of my clothes.'
'There wasn't anything else of value?'
'You have a list, don't you, on the claim?'
'In my file. I haven't really looked at it.'
'It's all Asian art, Chinese, some authentic, some copies.
But even if I'd brought the Rover there wouldn't have been room for the big pieces.'
'So for about three months the house was locked up, nobody there?'
'I'd spend a weekend.'
'Alone?'
She smiled, just a little. 'Where're you going with that, Joe?' And said, 'No, I wasn't always alone.'
He smiled the same way she did, just barely. He said, 'You got up there and the house is on fire.'
'Yeah, but I didn't see the flames right away. I told you, the fire started on the other side of the house, away from the road.'
'You say in that thicket.'
'Yeah. You have a problem with that?'
'I might,' Canavan said. 'According to Mrs. Montaigne, you were there a good twenty minutes to a half hour before there was smoke or any sign of a fire. And she had a pretty good view of the back side of the property.'
There was a silence.
'In fact, she said she saw you go in the house.'
Robin took her time getting up from the sofa. She said, 'Joseph,' walking across the room to a bar with a rose-tinted mirror behind it, 'what would you like to drink?'
'Whatever you're having,' Canavan said.
Straight-up martinis. He sipped his watching Robin roll a perfect joint, tips of her fingers working but not looking at it, Robin asking in her Linda Fiorentino voice why he would want to be an insurance company stooge, Jesus, or why anyone would - Canavan letting it happen, giving Robin time to make her play. She said, 'No, first let me guess where you're from. The Midwest, right?' He saw this could take time, so he told her he was from Detroit, born and raised.
Came out to sunny California six years ago. She wanted to know what he did in Detroit and Canavan said: 'I was a police officer.'
She said, 'Jesus, really? What kind?'
Radio cars and then ten years on the bomb squad. Offered a job out here with an insurance company, investigating claims, before setting up his own company. He said he'd learned to recognize arson from working on the bomb squad. See what Robin thought of that.
She was cool. Handing him the joint she said, 'You left out your wife.'
'I don't have one,' Canavan said, hoping this was a variety of weed that inspired wit and not the kind put you to sleep.
He took a pretty good hit and passed the joint back to Robin.
She said, 'You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but I'll bet anything you had a wife at one time.'
He told her yeah, he got married while he was a cop. They came out here, he happened to get involved with a girl at the insurance company and his wife found out about it.
'She divorced you for that?'
'You'd have to know her,' Canavan said.
'So it wasn't the first time.'
He told her it was, as a matter of fact, the first and only time he ever fooled around.
She didn't believe him. Lying back among little pastel pillows on the white sofa Robin raised her eyebrows. She said, 'Really? You look to me, Joe, like the kind of guy, if it's there you don't pass it up. You still see her?'
'Who?'
'The girlfriend.'
'That was over before it went anywhere. I see my ex-wife now and then, we go out to dinner. Sometimes she does jobs for me. Chris's a photographer.' He picked up the raging-fire shots from the coffee table. 'She took these. Chris takes long-lens shots of people walking around who claim they can't walk. A guy shooting hoops in the backyard who's supposed to be in a wheelchair. Insurance fraud situations, all kinds, including arson,' Canavan said, bringing it back to Robin.
No reaction. Ducked that one like she didn't even hear it, saying, 'You go to bed with her?'
'What's between Chris and me,' Canavan said, 'stays between us. Okay?'
'That means you do,' Robin said. 'You keep Chris for backup, right? Call her when you haven't scored in a while.'
Robin pushed up from the sofa with her empty glass. You ready? One more - I have to go out tonight.'
Her husband dies and three months later fire destroys the house. Canavan wondered if there was a connection. He had no reason to believe there was; still, he didn't rule it out. He watched Robin sipping her martini. The only apparent effect the gin had on her, she spoke in a quieter voice and stared at him. Canavan could feel a buzz; combined with the weed it allowed him to stare back at Robin, time suspended, and ask her whatever he felt like asking. 'When you got married, did you have to sign a prenuptial agreement?'
She said, 'Don't worry about it.'
So he tried another tack. 'How'd you and Sid meet?'
'He saw me perform and we talked after. He asked me out.
He knew who I was. But basically, Joe, we got together the way people usually do, and fell in love.'
'He was a lot older than you.'
'What you're asking now, did I marry him for his money.
Sure, that had a lot to do with it, but I liked him. Sid was full of energy, played tennis - he'd sit down and cross his legs you'd see his foot going a mile a minute. You want to know how he was in bed? Not bad, though we had to get almost perpendicular - you know what I mean? - to do it.'
'Wasn't he kind of heavy?'
'That's what I'm talking about. But then toward the end he lost a lot of weight, like thirty pounds. No, Sid was tender, very gentle, till Viagra came along and he turned into Attila the fucking Hun. If you can picture that.'
'I thought he had a heart condition.'
'It wasn't serious. He took something for it. His blood pressure was a little high.'
'And his doctor let him have Viagra?'
'Sid got it over the Internet.'
'But he must've known the combination was dangerous, Viagra and heart medication?'
She said, 'Joe, Sid was a shooter. He didn't get where he was being cautious. It helped he was a genius.'
'You were happily married.'
'Yeah, very.'
'But you fooled around a little.'
