present, focused and involved. Yes, involved, that was it, no longer a victim, no longer helpless.
Cheney realized he liked her, realized he really didn’t want her to die by an assassin’s hand.
She snapped her fingers under his nose. “Earth to Cheney, you there?”
“Yes. Now, are these all rumors about Wallace’s young groupies?”
“Nope. Actually I saw one of his girls coming out of his house. He obviously didn’t think anyone was around because he fondled her on the top step. Then he saw me, saw that I’d seen what he was doing, and he looked bilious. When he realized I didn’t condemn him or anything, and never made any smart-mouth cracks, he was as he’d always been toward me, kind and charming. Like I already told you, Wallace asked me out, but before that, he’d call simply to see how I was, to hear the sound of my voice, send me the occasional flowers. I remember telling him once I was far too old for him. He only laughed.
“I only went to dinner with him occasionally since the police were still looking hard at me, probably even had me followed.”
“Nah, they don’t have the manpower.”
“No, really, I just bet they reasoned that since I’d already married one older man, why not another? I could be following a pattern, no?”
“What did Bevlin think of Wallace’s wooing you?”
“He’s young, he sees Wallace as old. I don’t think he was worried, or even cared. The psychic community is small and very incestuous. There aren’t many secrets.”
“Well, naturally not—they read each other’s minds, right?”
“More snark. To be honest, I don’t hear much about mind reading, but it would be really scary if some of them could do that.”
Cheney turned on the ignition. “Okay, let’s go see if we can catch Tammerlane fondling another teenager. Filbert, right?”
“Right, fourth house from the corner on the left.”
“A mansion like yours?”
“It’s very different from ours—mine. You’ll see. How odd. I’ve never thought of my house as a mansion. It’s just my house, where I live, where Freddy sometimes visits and sheds all over the sofas.”
He thought of his condo, how it would fit into a third of her downstairs, thought of that big cat hissing, and smiled.
There was a lot of traffic that morning under a steel-gray April sky, and the wind blew sharp and chill. An hour of sun would have been nice, Cheney thought. At that moment, the thick clouds parted and a wide shaft of sun speared through in front of the Audi. A good sign, he hoped.
As Cheney’s Audi muscled its way smoothly up the thirty-degree-angled street, he said, “I’ll never forget the first time I drove up one of these steep hills—I thought I was going to sail right off the top of the earth. It still gives my old heart a leap.”
“Just try it driving a stick.”
Cheney said, “A friend of mine, another agent who’d transferred in from Utah, drove a stick, bragged he was the only real man in the office, that it took real skill to do it right, until one day his clutch gave out and he went hurtling backward down into an intersection filled with cars. Thankfully, no one was hurt. No one in our office drives a stick anymore, him included. Do you know your hair looks like my desk?”
She whipped her head around.
“Your hair—it’s the same mahogany color.”
“I see. So, do you like your desk? Admire the finish? Polish it every day? Maybe you even like it so much you don’t put your feet on it?”
He laughed, felt every care roll off his shoulders for a moment. He hadn’t laughed much in too long a time, too much crap at work, too many crooks they couldn’t catch up with, too much frustration. But he felt good right then, really good. He said, “Nah, I never put my feet on my desk unless I’m barefoot. I worship my desk, I even have papers under my computer so it won’t scratch the finish. I plan to be buried with my desk.”
She laughed, lightly touched her fingertips to his hair. “The color of your hair reminds me of a tan-colored Subaru I once owned. Soft and creamy, sort of like a caramel.”
He turned onto Filbert Street. “Pay attention. I ain’t no caramel. My hair’s plain old brown.”
He turned right from Filbert, and in the next minute he turned his Audi onto Wallace Tammerlane’s wide driveway. “Dear God in heaven, a double garage in San Francisco,” Cheney said. “That alone has got to make this place worth big bucks.”
“Probably.”
“Julia, I know he’s your friend, that you care about him, but be watchful—you know his body language, his expressions, okay?”
She gave him a look, then nodded.
As he walked her to the front door of the flamboyant three-story Victorian, he said, “Just jump in when and if you think it’s appropriate.”
He was including her, really including her. She gave him a blazing smile.
CHAPTER 26
A man dressed entirely in starched black answered the buzzer. He stood squarely in the middle of the doorway.
