It was only a few hundred feet from one side of the ridge to the other, but it felt like they’d traveled a thousand miles. The climate they’d left behind was temperate and practically tropical, cooled by the gentle breezes blowing off the ocean. Now they’d stepped into a desert of dead grasses and blasting heat.
Detective Carlton Lassiter had always loved crossing the hills that separated Santa Barbara from the rest of the world. Sure, the city he lived in was widely considered a paradise, and the backcountry was barely livable for rattlesnakes. But there was a truth to the arid heat that was hidden by the green and pleasant climate of the city below: Life was cruel and death was always waiting around the corner for you. The hills told you that. Bums lived out on the streets of Santa Barbara for years-there was one old guy he was sure had been camping outside a shopping mall since Carter was president. But you couldn’t survive a summer in the hills without running water and air-conditioning and shelter. In August you’d be lucky to make it through a day.
As much as he enjoyed the physical experience, though, Lassiter had little interest in being here now. He had work to do, cases to close, criminals to catch. He couldn’t afford to waste most of a day trying yet again to solve the murder of a woman who hadn’t been murdered.
This was his partner’s doing. She had insisted they follow some mysterious lead in the Mandy Jansen case and slog up this way. At least she said she’d had a lead; she refused to tell him where it had come from. For all he knew it had been revealed by a gypsy woman reading her palm.
Normally he wouldn’t have cared where she’d gotten the tip. Juliet O’Hara was as good a detective as he’d ever met and the best partner he could imagine.
But lately she had begun to change. As far as he could tell it had started when they’d been called to the scene of that hanging cheerleader. For some reason the sight had affected her more deeply than she would acknowledge. Lassiter had offered her the advice that had always helped him through the tough times on the job. But when he’d pulled her aside and said “walk it off, Detective,” she had only given him that vacant smile she reserved for civilians who came into the station to report that space aliens were eating Jell-O on their lawn.
Lassiter was still willing to trust her instincts-he was here with her, wasn’t he? But he found himself questioning her judgment far more than he ever had before.
And now, as their unmarked sedan bounced down a dirt road leading into a deep canyon, he had to wonder if she’d lost her senses completely. There was no crime to investigate at all, just a poor, unfortunate girl who had taken her own life. And yet O’Hara was insisting they search for some kind of phantom evidence in Southern California’s answer to Appalachia.
“Are you sure you’ve got the right address, Detective?” Lassiter said.
“No, Carlton,” O’Hara said, not taking her eyes off the rutted road. “The other fifteen times you asked me that, I lied. But now that you’ve hit the magic sixteenth, I’m compelled to tell the truth. I’ve actually got the wrong address, and I’m just going to keep driving through the middle of nowhere because I’m too embarrassed to admit it.”
“At least that would be behavior I could understand,” Lassiter said. “I can’t imagine what else would possibly drag you up here.”
The car rounded a tree and suddenly Lassiter could imagine. There was a small blue car sitting under the branches, the one bit of shade for miles around. Shawn Spencer was stretched out on the hood.
“This was your tip?” Lassiter said.
“It wasn’t a tip. It was a lead,” O’Hara said. “We found it together.”
She pulled the sedan up behind the blue Echo and got out. After a long moment Lassiter followed, but only because she’d turned off the ignition and the cabin was already starting to heat up.
“Sorry we’re late, Shawn,” O’Hara said, as he ambled over to meet them.
“No problem,” Shawn said. “It’s hard to move fast when you’re stapled to a lead weight.”
Lassiter glared at Shawn. “What does this loser know about Mandy Jansen?” Lassiter said. “I doubt she would have given him the time of day.”
“I don’t think he knows anything about her,” O’Hara said. “We’re here searching for Macklin Tanner.”
Now Lassiter turned his glare on her. “The Mandy Jansen case would be bad enough,” he said. “At least that’s technically an SBPD case, even if it’s only still open because you’ve got some strange fixation with it. But Macklin Tanner isn’t a case at all. Our detectives looked at it, determined there was no foul play, and dismissed it. So if you are using the time of two Santa Barbara Police Department detectives to help a private detective out on his own case, that is theft, and despite my great respect and admiration for you, I will have no choice but to report you to the proper authorities.”
“And then Santy Claus won’t bring her any presents,” Shawn said. “I bet you’ll feel guilty come December twenty-sixth, Lassie.”
“I’m at a dead end with Mandy Jansen’s case,” O’Hara said. “I asked Shawn to consult, but since the department wasn’t prepared to pay I told him I’d give him a hand on his case.”
“Unfortunately she didn’t mention she’d be bringing some other body part, as well,” Shawn said.
“I refuse to have anything to do with this,” Lassiter said.
“Too late, Carlton,” O’Hara said. “The mileage is already on the vehicle. If you report me, what are you going to say-that I kidnapped you?”
“Don’t think I won’t report myself, as well,” Lassiter said. “You know I will.”
“Poor Lassie,” Shawn said. “Doesn’t have any friends, so he’s got to do everything on his own.”
“I don’t see your little sidekick anywhere, Spencer,” Lassiter said. “Oh, that’s right. He dumped you to take a real job.”
“He didn’t dump me,” Shawn said, rolling off the car’s hood and landing on his feet. “If you ever had a friend you’d know that sometimes you’ve got to go off in separate directions for a while.”
“I’d say three hundred miles and eighteen tax brackets north is about as far as Gus could get away from you,” Lassiter said. “So, what, you kept his car as a souvenir?”
“He doesn’t need it in San Francisco,” Shawn said. “So I offered to look after it when he’s out of town.”
“Thoughtful of you,” Lassiter said. “If I ran the plate, I bet I’d find this piece of junk is owned by Gus’ old company. And since Gus doesn’t work for them anymore, and in fact has started working for their competitor, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find that they requested its return weeks ago. By now it might even have been reported stolen.”
“Carlton, stop,” O’Hara said.
“It’s not stolen,” Shawn said. “Gus asked me to turn it in. And I’m going to. But I have to make sure to clean all of our stuff out of the glove compartment first, and I haven’t had a chance to do that, what with all the official police business you can’t seem to wrap up without help from me.”
“The Santa Barbara Police Department is perfectly capable of closing its cases without you, Spencer,” Lassiter said.
“Really?” Shawn said. “You should try it someday.”
The two men stood toe-to-toe, and if the tension radiating off them got any hotter the dried grass under their feet would soon be bursting into flame. O’Hara took Lassiter’s arm and pulled him back a step.
“He’s helped us plenty,” O’Hara said. “And if Tanner is in trouble, then it doesn’t really matter whose case it is, does it?”
Lassiter thought that over. “And if this turns out to be as big a waste of time as I think?” he said finally. “What do we do if Macklin Tanner hasn’t been kidnapped?”
“We’ll have to deal with that issue if it comes about,” O’Hara said. “Maybe if we just keep negative thoughts in our heads, everything will work out for the worst and we’ll be okay.”
Lassiter muttered something under his breath, but he gave her a shallow nod. “What is this brilliant tip we’re chasing?”
“We’re going to see a man about a horse,” Shawn said. “No, wait. That’s not right. We’re going to see a man about a horseshoe. Or are we going to see a horseshoe about a man?”
“I’m so glad we took the afternoon off to have this experience,” Lassiter said. “How I’ve missed this sparkling repartee.”
“There’s reason to believe that there’s a connection between Macklin’s disappearance and a blacksmith’s shop in the Santa Barbara area,” O’Hara said.
“What reason?” Lassiter said.
“If I told you we learned it from an exploding librarian, would that convince you?” Shawn said.
