He nodded. He wouldn’t ask her again, because he knew she wouldn’t answer. He said, “Is that it?”
“Unless you have something you want to say?”
“Only, I’m glad I wasn’t on my way to an important appointment.”
Her smile was cold. “So am I, Mr. Allen.”
She didn’t follow him when he drove away from there, but she didn’t have to. She’d picked up whatever information she was going to pick up, and she knew it. And Parker had picked up a couple of things, too.
For instance, she hadn’t tried any names on him. “How do you know Mrs. Langen?” “What’s your relationship with Wendy Beckham?” “Do you happen to know Jake Beckham?” “What else are you doing in this part of the world, Mr. Allen?”
She hadn’t asked those questions. She should have, but she hadn’t, and he knew that meant she knew he’d lied to her.
She was going to be a problem.
6
At dinner in the same family restaurant, Parker told the other two about Wendy Beckham’s doubts about Dr. Madchen. Dalesia said, “I thought he was a jerk that first day in his office. Comes out with a folder, has to have a very important conference with the receptionist, at the same time he’s giving us the steady double-o.”
“I don’t mind if he’s curious,” Parker said. “I mind if he’s drawing attention. This woman cop on the case, this Reversa, she’s sharp, and she knows something’s happening, and she’s keeping an eye on everything that ripples anywhere around Jake.”
“So,” McWhitney said, “you mean we should stop this guy from rippling.”
“He’s seen Nick and me,” Parker said.
With a snort, Dalesia said, “And he’ll sure remember us.”
“A little later tonight,” Parker said, “we’ll go visit him and see if he can learn to control himself.”
“Good,” McWhitney said. “Save me for if it has to turn mean.”
Dr. Madchen’s home address was in the local phone book, and when Parker and Dalesia got there at nine- thirty that night, the neighborhood was a surprise. “He didn’t get this from pushing pills,” Dalesia said.
It was true. This had to be one of the richest neighborhoods anywhere around here. Large old houses set well back from the road commanded acres of rolling lawns and many specimen trees and well tended hedges. The few cars visible down the long driveways were recent and expensive.
This was a hard place to move around in without being noticed. There was nowhere nearby to leave the car, and it wasn’t a neighborhood where people did a lot of walking, particularly at night.
They were in Dalesia’s Audi. Parker’s new rented Dodge Stratus would stay mostly out of sight. The second time they approached the doctor’s address, Parker said, “Let me out, circle back for me. I’ll see what’s the situation.”
There was very little traffic along these curving roads, none of them major streets from anywhere to anywhere, just ribbons laid out on a field of emerald green. The tall streetlights were soft, and so were the private lights defining driveways and entrances. At the moment, there wasn’t another moving vehicle in sight. Parker left the Audi and walked in along Dr. Madchen’s blacktop drive in a faint, pervasive amber glow that made everything visible but nothing easy to focus on.
The Madchen house was brick, probably a century old, three stories high. Elaborate white woodwork surrounded all the doors and windows, and a large, empty wooden porch crossed the front, looking as though no one had used it since the invention of air-conditioning.
Not trusting the old wood floor of the porch to be silent, Parker moved around the house to the right, where he saw lights in windows. Moving slowly but steadily, keeping a few feet back from the windows, he passed along the right side of the house.
First a living room, brightly lit but empty. Then a dining room, where a uniformed Asian maid finished loading a round silver tray with dinner things and carried it away through a dark wood swinging door. Then a smaller room with darker furniture and walls, and a blue-lit woman not quite facing the window Parker peered through.
He stopped. The woman was fiftyish, heavyset, with too-black hair. She was seated deep in a soft broadcloth armchair, and wore a lumpy satin robe or muumuu with Hawaiian island scenes repeated on it. She was barefoot, her feet on a hassock. She gazed forward, discontented, brooding. The television set she glowered at, its sound rising dimly and disjointedly through the window, was out of Parker’s sight, below and just to his right of the window.
He watched her for a minute. The Asian maid entered and asked something respectful, folding her hands at her waist like a character in a movie. Without looking away from the screen, the woman said something sour. The maid nodded, crossed to pick up the squat empty glass from beside her mistress, and carried it out of the room. The woman abruptly called something after her, still without looking away from the television set. Parker thought he made out the word “ice.”
The maid didn’t immediately return. Parker retraced his steps back to the road. Three minutes later, when Dalesia arrived, Parker went around to the driver’s side. When Dalesia lowered his window, Parker bent to say, “He isn’t home. Just a wife and a maid. Keep circling, I’ll wait for him, see what we do.”
“Fine.” Dalesia nodded generally at the neighborhood. “You know,” he said, “along about the second week, I bet this gets boring.”
An hour and a half later, a car came slowly down the road, its right blinker switched on. There was no other car anywhere in sight. This had to be the doctor.
Parker waited, leaning against the plump specimen tree shaped like a lollipop, with maroon leaves, that stood off to the left of the driveway, midway between road and house. The oncoming car’s lights flashed over him as the car turned in, but he doubted he’d been seen. The doctor’s night vision would be limited to what he expected to see along this well-known route.
As the car moved slowly toward the house, Parker stepped away from the tree and crossed the lawn to intercept it. The doctor, alone in the car, holding the steering wheel with both hands, was miles deep in his own thoughts and wasn’t aware of anything else until Parker tapped his side window. Then he jolted away, slamming on
