couldn’t say exactly when she’d emerged, but it had been before the end of the radiation therapy. Woke up one morning and she was no longer afraid-fear today, gone tomorrow. In its place was the growing, driving need for normalcy, to be in control of her life again, to be whole and live whole. He said he understood how she felt, but he didn’t, really. You had to experience it to understand it fully. And please, God, don’t ever put him in that position.
Thinking about him made her feel tender. He was so many things, most of them good, a few bemusing, one or two annoying. Like all men, she supposed. He probably felt the same about her, about all women. Women are from Venus; men are from Mars-true enough. She still hadn’t quite forgiven him for keeping the knowledge of Cybil’s wartime rape from her, or the now-disproven possibility that that bastard Russ Dancer and not Ivan Wade was her father. Hadn’t quite forgiven Cybil, either, for that matter, though she could understand her mother’s need to keep the secret all these years. The woman thing again. But she’d never been able to stay angry at Bill for long. Even if he wasn’t justified in circumventing her right to know, he’d done it for the same basic reason Cybil had-to protect her because he loved her, didn’t want to see her hurt. You couldn’t really fault him for that. Part of what made him a good husband, wasn’t it? Part of what made a good marriage. Caring combined with love, desire, friendship, understanding, a little mystery, and spiced with a clash of wills and attitudes every now and then. By those standards, theirs was just about the best you could ask for.
It was after one now and she still hadn’t had lunch. She’d thought about going out to eat, driving over to Larkspur and taking Cybil out or calling Paula to see if she was free. But she wasn’t quite up to a long solitary drive yet or in a mood for Paula and her new voodoo passion, and the prospect of a restaurant meal alone didn’t appeal to her, either. She made herself a green salad with tomatoes and avocado and strips of leftover chicken. While she ate, she considered her options for the rest of the afternoon.
Too restless to sit around here. She needed to get out somewhere for a while. A walk in Golden Gate Park would be nice, but it was foggy and cold again today and even if she bundled up, it probably wasn’t a wise idea. No, but she could still go to the park-visit the de Young. She hadn’t been in some time, since shortly after the museum’s architecturally controversial new home had opened. She’d enjoyed the visit to Brookline Gallery on Sunday, the exhibit of T. R. Quentin’s paintings, but as good as Quentin’s work was, it was neither fine art nor as stimulating.
Settled. Check her e-mail again on the slim chance that something pressing had come in from the agency, and then she was out of here.
Shameless followed her into the spare bedroom, hopped up on her desk, and peered at the screen as if he were also trying to read her messages. Nosy animal, but good company just the same. Nothing from Jim or Miranda or anyone else at Bates and Carpenter. But there was one e-mail of interest, from Tamara, sent at Bill’s request: Nancy Mathias’s diary entries over the last six months of her life. Tamara had picked out the ones that struck her as meaningful, but he probably wanted to have a look at the entire batch himself. Even as technologically challenged as he was, he could manage to open a computer file and scan through the contents.
So could she, with a lot more ease.
Better not. The idea of peering at a dead woman’s private thoughts still struck Kerry as ghoulish. And she and Bill had always been respectful of each other’s privacy-no interference in personal or professional business matters. Then again, they had no secrets from each other, and he’d let her go through Nancy Mathias’s private papers with him, hadn’t he? Involved her in the investigation? And last night, before they went to bed and without her asking, he’d volunteered a full report on his meetings with Brandon Mathias and Anthony Drax, what he’d learned from the elderly neighbor in Palo Alto and from Philomena Ruiz. No earthly reason why he’d object to her looking at the diary entries.
Oh, hell, go ahead, she thought. It may be ghoulish, but you can’t help being curious. Or wanting to play detective.
She opened the file and began to read.
Painful experience. She’d been prepared for it, or thought she was, but a linear paging through day after day of loneliness, misery, and reported abuses by the son of a bitch Nancy Mathias had married was not the same as being presented with a capsule summary. Poor woman. Some of her suffering had been brought on by her own weakness, her inability to walk away from that hellish relationship. But she’d been under tremendous psychological pressure and it’s not always easy to know what to do under those circumstances. Control freak Mathias was responsible for most of her pain, yet it was clear that something else, some other force, was affecting her as well. Did that force, whatever it was, have anything to do with her murder? If it was murder. Tamara was right: there was nothing in the diary entries, no matter how you looked at them, that suggested a motive.
Kerry read to the final entry, sighed, and looked at the time in the upper corner of the screen. Already 1:30; she’d better hustle over to the de Young before it got any later.
She started to close the file so she could shut down. And stopped herself, frowning, staring at the screen. The final entry stared back at her.
Time. Date and time.
September 9, 10:05 P.M.
WHY ADHERE?
Something there that didn’t seem quite right…
Yes, it did. Now it did.
Of course!
Excited, she picked up the phone and called Bill’s cell.
23
JAKE RUNYON
Stander was a nowhere place.
Not a village or a hamlet-an old, disused railroad siding. If it had ever been anything more, the only evidence left standing were a gutted stone building between the two-lane blacktop and the main rail line, the remains of a water tank, and the fenced-in compound that had once been RipeOlive Processors. Nearest signs of life were a farmhouse some distance back, a combination country store and junk dealer a quarter of a mile before that. Anybody’s guess who or what Stander had been, or why the siding had a name at all.
Olive groves stretched out on both sides of the road here, flanking the compound to the east, hiding Highway 5 to the west. Some of the gnarled trees looked as though they were still being harvested; others seemed as dead as the RipeOlive buildings. The plant was set back a hundred yards or so from the blacktop, the chain-link fence around it and the entrance gates capped by slanted strands of barbed wire. The main rail line was still in service- the condition of the rails and ties told you that-but the spur that branched off to the plant, weed choked, broken up, rusty, hadn’t been used in years.
Runyon turned off onto a potholed ribbon of pavement that bent up across the right-of-way. The paved portion of the road looped around to the front gates; a once-graveled, now mostly dirt track intersected it near the fence corner, led around to the olive groves at the rear. On a pole next to the gates stood a metal sign, bullet pocked where somebody had used it for target practice, the green and black lettering on it beginning to fade:
RipeOlive Brand
“From Our Trees to Your Table”
Two buildings, both of unpainted wood with sheet-metal roofs, were visible inside the fence from here-a long, low warehouse and a shorter structure that formed a detached ell on the north side. Coming in, he’d seen a third building at the rear, some kind of long shed stretched out parallel to the warehouse. The yard was paved, the pavement cracking and sprouting weeds and dry grass. Heat shimmered over everything, gave the buildings an insubstantial, two-dimensional look.
Just what he’d expected to find.
Nowhere place, abandoned place.
He got out to examine the gates. Double padlocked, the locks showing rust and free of key scrapes. No signs of life in the compound, or that anybody had been in there recently-not from this vantage point. Another entrance?
