Bestiary

on the top of his head. “That scar’s healing up nicely,” Del said, standing up again.

“Would you like some coffee?” Beth said. “I was just making it.”

“Sure.” Del stopped to look around the living room as Beth went into the kitchen. “What happened here?” Del said. “Did the study group break up early?”

“Looks like it,” Beth called out as she poured a mug for Del. “How do you like your coffee?”

“Strong and black, just like my women.”

She brought him the mug, and found him poking through the books and papers scattered around the room. “Thanks,” he said, studying another one of the Post-its. “Looks like your hubby was working on some very odd theory here.”

“Why do you say that?” Beth asked, as Del sauntered around the coffee table to take in another of the open volumes. There was a picture of a saichania skeleton, from the Late Cretaceous period, unearthed in the Gobi Desert. He took a sip from his mug. “Good coffee,” he said. The next picture, in a book beside it, was an illustration of a lycaenops, a mammal-like reptile from the Late Permian, Del’s own special area of study. He leaned down and flipped the pages to the next fluttering Post-it note. There was a black-and-white sketch, not bad really, of a homotherium, a scimitar-toothed cat that had hunted mammoth in Europe and North America before dying out, along with its favorite prey, at the end of the Pleistocene ice age. “Because he’s examining critters from all different epochs, and all different orders, from all over the globe.” Del couldn’t resist trying to put it all together — was there something that united the things he was looking at? Some thread Bones was following that he, for the life of him, could not see? He’d have to ask him, if he could ever find him.

“I left him a couple of messages on his cell,” Del said. “I thought we’d go hiking again, or even fishing.”

“Fishing?” Beth said, with a laugh. “Carter?”

“Don’t dismiss it,” Del said, “the boy needs some R&R. He works too hard. I told him that even when he was just a grad student.”

“I guess it didn’t take,” Beth said. “He left me a note saying he’s at the office.”

“Not when I called there,” Del blurted out, then instantly regretted it. Oh man, had he just blown Carter’s cover story? (But what the hell would he be covering up for?)

“You tried his office?” Beth said, trying to sound unconcerned.

“Well, maybe he’s in the lab, or down in the basement with our pal, the La Brea Man.”

That was probably it, Beth thought. “Say, I was just planning to make some breakfast. You like blueberry pancakes?”

“No, I don’t like them,” Del said. “I love them.”

While Del lingered over the books and papers, Beth popped upstairs to put on some shorts and a tank top; fixing breakfast for Del, in her robe and slippers, felt just a little too domestic. But that was interesting what he’d said about the bewildering nature of Carter’s research downstairs. Last night, when al-Kalli had escorted him back from wherever they’d been for the whole duration of the outdoor concert, he had looked altogether out of it. His eyes seemed focused on something that was no longer in front of him, but which he was seeing, nonetheless. And on the way home, when she’d asked what that had been all about, he’d just dismissed it by saying that al-Kalli had shown him some old bones from Saharan Africa that he’d wanted Carter’s take on.

“So, were they important?” Beth had asked.

And it was as though Carter hadn’t even heard her; he was just staring out the windshield of the car, driving as if on autopilot, already tuned back to some other frequency. The last time she’d seen him this consumed was back in New York, when the packet had arrived with the pictures of the fossil found in the cave from Lago d’Avernus. Like then, he had completely submerged himself in a world of interior theorizing and rumination. And much as she would have liked to continue to compare notes on the party while driving home, she knew enough not to take offense.

That was just Carter being Carter.

By the time she got back to the kitchen, Del had released Joey from his high chair and was down on the tile floor, playing with him. “His motor skills are exceptional,” Del said, in what she knew was meant as a warm and cuddly comment.

“How are yours?” Beth said, taking some eggs from the fridge. “Want to run the egg beater?”

“I think I could manage that.”

While the two of them prepared the pancakes and bacon — though Beth didn’t eat it, Carter did — Beth asked about how Del was liking L.A., how he liked living with his sister and her husband, and the answers were what she expected.

“No offense,” he said as the first pancakes were coming off the griddle and the bacon sizzled in the pan, “but I do not understand how anybody can actually live in a place like this. Way too many people, way too many cars, way too much noise. You can’t even hear yourself think.” He took the syrup and a plate of pancakes from Beth and put them on the table in the breakfast nook. “And the air’s so bad you can see it before you can breathe it.” He pulled out a chair and sat down. “But these look good enough to eat.”

“Go ahead and start,” she said, though, glancing over her shoulder, she saw that she needn’t have bothered. Del had already smothered a pile of pancakes in syrup and was digging in. He ate with the concentration and gusto of a man who customarily ate alone.

Idly, she wondered if she knew any eligible women who might be interested in Del. There were a few single women at the Getty, but they were far too sophisticated and polished. Even though he had a first-rate mind and a very kind disposition, they would never be able to see past the wild and woolly, Ted Nugent-style surface. They’d take one look and run for Beverly Hills.

“Carter tell you that we came across an abandoned cabin — well, more like a shack, really — on our last hike? I’m telling you, a few more nights on the balcony above Wilshire Boulevard, and I’ll be ready to move in.”

No, Beth wasn’t likely to find anyone for Del among her immediate acquaintances. She put the bacon on the table and sat down with him.

The obvious elephant in the room was Carter — or, more to the point, the missing Carter. They tried talking about other things — the drought, the latest police department fracas, the ongoing debate about providing illegal aliens with driver’s licenses — but they both knew they were just beating around the bush. So it was something of a relief when Del, swallowing the last strip of bacon and washing it down with his coffee, said, “What do you think? Should I try to track him down, or wait’ll he turns up on his own?”

Beth had been thinking about it, too. And what she’d decided was that it was a perfect hot and sunny day, and nothing would feel better, or be more likely to help her clear her head, than a swim in the community pool. Most of the time, there was no one there, and even when there was, they tended to keep their heads down, absorbed in a paperback or zoned out on their headphones.

“I was thinking of taking Joey down to the pool for a swim.”

“You’ve got a pool?”

“We don’t, but Summit View has. It’s just down the street.”

She could see that his interest was piqued. “You could borrow one of Carter’s swimsuits.”

“Hell, no. I’ve got some Jams in the truck.” He wiped his mouth, grabbed his plate, and said, “What are we waiting for? Let’s boogie.”

In no time, they’d cleared the table, gotten Joey into his stroller and Del into his Jams, and were on their way to the pool. Champ trotted along beside them, head down to the short brown grass (the watering restrictions had gotten tighter all the time). At the gate to the pool, where no dogs were allowed, they had to maneuver things so that Champ was left just outside — he stared at them mournfully from a patch of shade, his leash looped around a gate post — as they set themselves up under a big yellow umbrella. Even on a blisteringly hot Sunday morning like this, almost no one was at the pool. A couple of teenage girls, coated with lotion, were cooking themselves to a turn, and a man with long white legs and bare feet, his head buried in an open newspaper, was all the way at the other end.

Del, like some kid who’d been cooped up too long, peeled off his T-shirt, threw it on the chaise, and did a cannonball into the deep end of the pool. When he came up again, shaking off the water from his long, white hair, he looked to Beth like Poseidon, rising from the ocean depths.

“Come on in,” he shouted, “the water’s great!”

“In a few minutes,” Beth said, resting her head against the back of the chaise and closing her eyes. “In a few minutes.” But lying back now, in only her one-piece suit, with a faint breeze blowing across her bare limbs, she