Hunt realized that her relentless apparent guilelessness was wearing him down. She had either thought all of this through to a degree that would have been unique in his experience, or she was in fact telling the truth. Mickey believed her, Jim Parr had believed her, Tamara couldn’t bring herself to think ill of her.
“You know what I wish?” she asked him.
“What’s that?”
“That I’d just never met Ellen. Then I’m sure none of us would be going through this. At least certainly not me.”
Hunt felt an unexpected little frisson of interest at these words. They made him recall his first meeting with Ellen Como, when she’d set his own mind-and by extension Juhle’s and Russo’s, since Hunt had passed it along to them-onto the idea that Dominic had been in love with Alicia, certainly a believable scenario given his reputation and her desirability. But what had never quite registered with Hunt was he had accepted this bare fact-Dominic’s love of Alicia-because he’d taken Ellen’s word for it.
The other bare fact-from Hunt’s personal experience-was Ellen’s enmity toward her husband, and her rage and jealousy at Alicia for being young and beautiful.
“How did you even meet her?” Hunt asked. “I’d heard she didn’t have much to do with Dominic’s work.”
“She didn’t. But one of the causes she did believe in was the Sanctuary House-battered women and their kids. And back when I first came on, Nancy Neshek had their big yearly do at her place and it was my night off and I thought-well, Dominic thought also, since I was just starting to work on my networking-that I ought to go. Besides, the rest of the Sunset professional staff was going, too, so I wouldn’t be all alone with just people I didn’t know. It would be fun, and great food-always a good thing.
“But then Dominic, just being his usual charming self, you know, he kind of pulled me away from Lorraine and the other Sunset women and escorted me over specially to introduce me to Ellen as one of his new drivers, trying to make me feel at home, and I could just tell from the second she laid eyes on me that she was going to make trouble if she could. I mean, I was wearing this nice simple black cocktail dress-totally appropriate since it’s this like formal party-and Ellen looks me up and down and says something like, ‘Oh, hello, dear. Is that the new driver’s uniform?’ or some such bullshit. I could tell she wanted to scratch my eyes out, and this was long before Dominic and I had any relationship at all. So later, when we got to be friends, I guess he’d mention me sometimes, and she didn’t forget. She wasn’t going to be happy until I was toast.”
As he listened to this, Hunt’s eyes had gone vacant and faraway. For one thing, almost without his conscious assent, he found that he had crossed over the line regarding Alicia. She sat facing him with no agenda and no sense of drama, just telling him what she knew as an unadorned truth.
And something else besides.
“Mr. Hunt?”
“I’m here.”
“Is everything all right?”
“No,” he said. “Not everything. Do you think Jim went to Sunset after he got finished at Irving Pizza?”
“Absolutely. If he made it. But it’s only a few blocks, so he should have.”
Hunt made the quick count in his head. San Francisco’s east-to-west streets run south through the avenues in alphabetical order; Irving at Nineteenth was therefore only six blocks from Ortega at Nineteenth. An easy walk, even for an old man with a beer buzz in a light rain.
“Mickey’s out there now,” Hunt said. “At Sunset, using their phone to check some alibis. I’ve got to make another phone call.”
32
“I’m here with her now,” Hunt told Mickey. “She’s fine.”
“Did she drive Jim home yesterday?”
“No.” Hunt paused. “She drove him out there.”
“Where?”
“Where you are right now. Sunset.”
“But he promised me…” Mickey stopped midthought. A promise might be a promise, but another cliche holds that a promise is made to be broken. And Mickey knew which one Jim had accessed yesterday. “That wily bastard. So where is he now?”
“That’s what I’m calling you about. We still don’t know. He hasn’t come home as of a half hour ago. The campus was closed when they got there, him and Alicia. So she dropped him off at a place called Irving Pizza…” Hunt filled him in on it.
“And you believe that?”
“It happened,” Hunt said. “I called the place. The manager corroborates it. He remembers him.”
Mickey hesitated. “So… you believe her?”
“Starting to. Maybe.”
“Whoa. Rein in that enthusiasm, Wyatt.”
“It’s under control. But what would really help is I need to talk to Al Carter, as soon as you can find him. Is he up there today?”
“He was. He might still be.”
“Okay. So find him first, then see if anybody up there saw Jim.”
“No.” Lorraine Hess was in the middle of a celery-and-carrot-stick lunch at her desk. “I never saw him. And I would have loved to have seen him, since apparently I missed him at the memorial too. He’s a wonderful man. Are you sure he was here?”
Mickey shook his head. “No. I know where he was at around two, maybe two-thirty, but not if he ever actually made it down here. Would you mind if I ask around?”
“Not at all. Do whatever you need to do.” She took a quick nibble of carrot. “Most of the staff didn’t get back here until closer to three, though, just so you know. We opened up again at around three-fifteen. So maybe he got here and didn’t want to wait. Especially if he was outside in yesterday’s weather.”
“I realize that,” Mickey said. “And all of this may be a false alarm anyway. Jim’s been known to stay out overnight before. He also promised me he wouldn’t come out here asking questions and bothering people, so maybe on his way his conscience started to eat at him a little. Though, knowing him, that’s unlikely.”
“He always did have a mind of his own.” Hess spread her palms, gave him a sympathetic smile. “Well, if there’s anything I can do, anything you need… you’re sure you’re up to all this running around?”
Mickey tried without much success to put on a reassuring face. “My head’s felt better, but I’ll be fine.”
“Somebody out in the cubicles might have some painkiller.”
“I appreciate that. Maybe I’ll just go and see what I can find.”
He walked out into the lobby and noticed that the makeshift table where they’d earlier been preparing the pledge-card mailing was now doubling as a kind of study hall for half a dozen pairs of tutors and their students. Limping over to them, head truly pounding again, he knocked at one end of the table. “Excuse me,” he said, as twelve pairs of eyes turned to him, “did any of you notice an older guy hanging around here yesterday afternoon, inside the building or out? About six feet, skinny, maybe seventy years old?”
A sea of blank faces stared back at him. Not much of a surprise.
On his phone call, Hunt had told Mickey to locate Al Carter if he could and ask him to give a call. After he’d done that, Mickey was to abandon his alibi search and phone calls to COO members and devote his time to trying to discover what had happened to Jim. His disappearance, Hunt had made clear, was now looking more and more as though it might be somehow related to this investigation, and this was anything but good news. In fact, the new development had seemed so immediate and important to Mickey that he’d totally forgotten that his boss had told him-first-to find Carter and give him the message to call Hunt. Then Mickey was to start looking for Jim, getting a line on where he’d gone after Irving Pizza if he could.
Suddenly Mickey realized he’d forgotten the first part of the assignment. Back in the administrative cubicles where he’d been making his phone calls, he got some aspirin and learned that Carter was back in the parking lot- the city had returned the limo and he had gone out to make sure they hadn’t damaged it too badly.
