short-cut hair was the color of wet straw.
Overall, Abatangelo thought, she looked cordial and educated and easy to fool. Shel pegged her for a lesbian. The woman glanced about the room.
“Let’s not be in a rush,” Shel murmured, turning back to Abatangelo so her face would be discernible only to him.
“What’s this about?”
“A mistake.” She took his hand in hers, set it in her lap, and smiled up at him cheerlessly.
The woman approached the younger crowd and consulted with them briefly. She gestured with a thumb toward the parking lot, and one of the men shrugged. Then the busty cute girl in the gathered pink dress poked her head up and pointed across the bar. Shel flashed on a girl from grade school. Always scrubbed and packed in petticoats, the good girl, the unhappy girl, the innocent little snitch. They follow you through life, she thought, the good girls, the unhappy girls. The woman with the straw-colored hair turned toward Abatangelo and Shel, broke into a grateful smile, then nodded her thanks to her informant.
“Heads up,” Abatangelo said quietly.
“There are women in this world that torture’s too good for,” Shel replied.
Abatangelo gestured toward Pete for another round then turned back to Shel and whispered, “One more time, quick, what’s this about?”
Shel replied merely, “Let me talk.”
“Lachelle Beaudry?” the woman said in greeting. Up close her appearance conveyed an even greater effect of blandness. Her skin looked wan from lack of sun, her glasses sat crooked on her face, she had matronly hands. Shel thought: my name. How did she get my name?
The woman drew a business card from her shoulder bag and offered it to Shel, who declined to accept it. The woman then extended it to Abatangelo, who took it in his fingers, smiled, and put it in his pocket without so much as a glance.
“My name is Jill Rosemond,” the woman said. She regarded Abatangelo quizzically. “You must be…”
“Somebody else,” he replied.
The woman smiled. To Shel, she said, “There’s a red Pathfinder parked outside. The girl over there said she saw you drive up in it. It’s registered to a Lachelle Beaudry. Her and a man named Frank Maas.”
She again regarded Abatangelo inquiringly.
“Not me,” he assured her.
Shel lifted her head back, eyes closed, looking pained.
“Perhaps this is a bad time,” the woman said.
Shel laughed. “Now there, you’re on the right track.”
“Yes, well. I’m working for a family up in Lodi, the Briscoes. They had a pair of twin sons.”
“I always heard twins came in pairs,” Shel said.
Jill Rosemond’s smile withered. “These twin brothers,” she responded, “are dead.”
“As in identically dead, or fraternally dead?”
Abatangelo reached out and placed a cautionary hand on Shel’s knee.
“I’m not accustomed to humor on this subject,” Jill Rosemond said.
“Then I’d guess you’re not from around here,” Shel replied.
Jill Rosemond adjusted her glasses and worked up another smile, hoping to start over. “I was hired by the family. The twins had not been heard from in some time.”
“Kinda comes with being dead, don’t you think, Jill?”
“I located the twins, found them finally in a house they rented along Sand Mound Slough. They’d been murdered.”
Shel said, “Sounds like you got there late.”
“People tell me the twins had been seen recently with a man named Frank Maas.”
“Here it comes,” Shel groaned, feigning enough-is-enough. “And know what I hear? Those two Briscoe kids were slumming it. Pair of coked-up little freaks. They were due.”
“Where did you hear that?”
Shel waved her off. “I’ll tell you something else. Kids don’t run away from home ‘cause everything’s great. I’d say the people paying you want to calm a bad conscience.”
Jill Rosemond’s expression conveyed she had heard this before. “What else,” she asked, “would you like to tell me?”
Shel shook her head. “You’ll listen to damn near anything, I’ll bet. Earn your fee. Family’s got as much use for you now as they do their kids, right? You were supposed to make contact with these prodigal twins of yours. Get them in touch with the family again, work up that backslapping get-together everybody was pretending they wanted. But you took too long. You blew it.”
“It appears we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.”
“Stop the heartfelt sincere bit, will you? It is very annoying.”
“I do not- ”
“Have you been paid?”
Abatangelo pressed Shel’s knee harder with his hand. She jerked her leg away.
“I beg your pardon?” Jill Rosemond said.
“This family, they’re into you what, a few grand now? Maybe more. So you tell them, I’ll go the extra yard. I’ll keep on pushing, pass on everything I find out to the boys in Homicide. ‘Cause if a perp crops up, or somebody who’ll pass for one, you want it to look like you helped out. And then you mail the Briscoes the bill, Jill. You’ve made it worth their while to pay up finally. They’ll get some vengeance, which’ll keep up appearances. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“I merely want to talk to Frank Mass,” Jill Rosemond said. “I think he can help me. Maybe. How can I know till I talk to him?”
“Oh Lord,” Shel groaned. “The scent. Go get ’em.” She leaned forward. “Horseshit.”
“I’m sorry, but this attitude of yours strikes me as just a bit hysterical.”
“Then, like I said, you’re not from around here, honey. We’re skeptical out this way. We’re white trash. Your kind never brings good luck.”
Shel gathered her things and dropped off her bar stool. “I’ve got nothing else to say to you.” She headed for the door. Abatangelo left his change and scrambled to catch up with her in the doorway.
“Let’s take my car,” he said under his breath.
“Danny, that’s not a good idea. Go home.”
Outside, the parking lot glowed from overhead lamplight. Up the hill traffic rushed past on the Delta Highway, cruising west into Pittsburg or east toward Antioch.
Abatangelo took Shel’s arm. “She’s going to follow you.”
Shel shook off his hand. “She’ll be in for a rude shock.”
Jill Rosemond stormed up from behind. Her face was flushed. Reaching them, she came to, adjusted her glasses and struck a pose of righteous fury. “I want to paint you a picture,” she said. “It’s a picture the family’s going to live with for a long time.”
Abatangelo tried to turn Shel away but she fought off his hold. She held out her finger as though intending to ram it through the other woman’s chin.
“You listen…,” Shel hissed.
“No, I’ve listened enough,” Jill Rosemond replied, holding her ground. “It’s your turn. I found the Briscoe twins in an upstairs room with their chests torn up by close-range gunfire. I had to wave through a cloud of flies to make sure it was them. Blood spread into the carpet like a paste, I still smell it sometimes. The twins, they were all of eighteen years old. Eighteen. Left there like meat, bloated, swimming with maggots. But that’s just another day in the life of white trash, I suppose.”
Shel crossed her arms, made a low caustic laugh and said, “That it?”
“I want to talk to Frank Maas.”
“No no no,” Shel said. “My turn now. My turn to paint the scene.” She cocked her head. “You ready? This Frank Maas you want so bad, he had a baby boy once, know that? Name was Jesse. He was all of three years old when he died. Killed with a hammer through his skull. Killer made his mother watch all this till he beat her to death with the
