Deborah flushed but her voice was steady when she told them that she knew nothing about the A- frame.
'Have you ever heard Harold mention a man named Jon Dupre?' Tim asked.
'Is he mixed up in this?'
'You know him?'
'Not personally, but his parents are members of the Westmont; Clara and Paul Dupre.'
Tim's brow furrowed. 'I don't think I know them.'
'I'm not surprised. I don't either, except to say hello. They're much older than Harold and me. They had Jon late in life.'
'Did Harold know Jon?'
'I'm sure he knew who he was, but I've never seen them together.'
'Sean?' Tim asked.
'I don't have anything else.'
'Then we'll leave you alone. If you think of anything else, or if you just want to talk, call me.'
Sean McCarthy followed Tim out of the living room and Deborah's friends returned to her side. Carl Rittenhouse walked over and was about to ask a question.
'Let's go outside,' Tim said. 'I need some air.'
The seasons were starting to change, and the wind was stirring the gold and red leaves that blanketed the lawn. Tim had worn a suit with no overcoat and he felt chilled, but the cold was refreshing after the stifling atmosphere in Travis's house.
'Did Deborah help?' Carl asked.
Kerrigan was about to reply when a car pulled past the barricade. Stan Gregaros got out and trudged up the driveway on the thick legs of a Greco-Roman wrestler. He spotted Kerrigan and McCarthy and waved a meaty hand that held a manila envelope.
'I got the pictures,' he told Kerrigan.
'Carl, let's go some place quiet,' Kerrigan said.
Chapter Eleven.
Jon Dupre's starkly modern house perched on the edge of a steep hill, separated from his neighbors by woods and facing an expanse of rolling hills and the low mountains of the coast range. The front of the house was curved tan stucco but the back was mostly glass, to take advantage of the spectacular view.
Two patrol cars pulled in behind Sean McCarthy's unmarked car. When McCarthy and Stan Gregaros walked toward the house, several officers grouped behind them. Gregaros grinned and loosened his jacket so his gun showed.
'Jon's not going to be happy to see me,' he told McCarthy. Then he rang the doorbell hard and fast, three times. When the door opened, Gregaros flashed his badge at a bikini-clad blonde. She glared at the detective as soon as she recognized him.
'Is the gentleman of the house in?' Gregaros asked.
'Go fuck yourself, Stanley.'
She started to shut the door but Gregaros stopped it with his foot.
'Don't be that way, Muriel.'
The blonde turned her back on the detective and walked away without a word.
'Lovely young lady,' Gregaros told McCarthy in a voice loud enough for the blonde to hear. 'Her real name is Muriel Nussbaum, but she's Sapphire when she's working. The blond hair is a dye job but her blow jobs are the real McCoy.'
Muriel didn't give Gregaros the satisfaction of a word or a glance as she waded through the deep carpeting that covered the floor of a high-ceilinged living room. She stepped aside when she arrived at a sliding glass door that opened onto a massive wood deck. Gregaros brushed past her. Dupre and a glassy-eyed brunette were chest- deep in a bubbling hot tub. A look of intense hatred suffused the pimp's handsome features as soon as he spotted Gregaros. A cell phone was lying on a low glass table. Dupre muscled his way out of the tub, grabbed it, and angrily speed-dialed a number. His eyes never left Gregaros as the detective crossed the deck.
McCarthy studied Dupre. He had the type of sleek, muscled body that is developed in a gym. His hair was short and styled. McCarthy was certain that Dupre's nails had been manicured. Then he shifted his gaze to Dupre's earlobe. There was a diamond stud in it.
'The motherfucker is here. He's in my house,' McCarthy heard Dupre say into the phone, his anger under tight control. As soon as Gregaros got within arm's length, Dupre thrust the phone at him.
'My lawyer wants to talk to you.'
'Certainly,' Gregaros answered with an accommodating smile.
Dupre handed Gregaros the phone and the detective let it slip through his fingers.
'Oh, gee,' he said, as he watched the phone sink to the bottom of the hot tub. 'How clumsy of me. And I did so want to chat with Mr. Baron.'
