‘How come I never hear you say that about your mom when she’s talking to you about, oh, your choice in clothing?’
‘That’s not just another language. It’s another planet.’
‘She loves you.’
‘You know she wishes I was a bit more . . . vah-voom.’
‘You’re wrong about that.’
Jayne polished off the last of her quiche and looked at Steelie. ‘This is why I don’t like leaving you two alone together. What part of my life was discussed?’
Marie arrived holding a tray with a cake on a stand and a coffee pot. ‘Your childhood, darling. And I don’t need to seek permission to do that seeing as I was there for it, too.’
She began cutting the cake, which was iced white with a coating of coconut shavings. She put a slice in front of Jayne.
‘What’s that?’ Jayne was poking at a dark line between the two layers of yellow sponge. ‘Looks like blood.’
‘Raspberry jam, as you well know.’
Steelie sniffed her own slice appreciatively.
‘Now, this particular cake,’ Marie said, ‘is ideal for a garden party. Say, when you want to introduce a special someone to your parents.’
‘But you already know Steelie.’ Jayne almost kept a straight face.
‘Layered, this cake could even work for a garden wedding,’ Marie continued.
‘Good God,’ Jayne muttered.
Steelie chimed in, ‘You’ll have to ask Scott if he minds your maid of honor wearing pants on the big day.’
Jayne glared at her. ‘Traitor.’
By Sunday morning, Scott and Eric had traded the Suburban for a surveillance vehicle. Scott turned on to Prickly Pear Close and saw the gold van parked three-quarters of the way down on the right. The street itself barely lived up to its name. A single prickly pear did exist against all odds at the corner where the street came off the main road in a T-junction but the cactus did more to catch tumbleweed than it did to establish the suburban vista envisioned by fast-talking developers in the 1980s.
Most of the houses on the street had given up all pretense of a garden, even a desert garden, as front yards had been turned into off-street parking for extended family who had moved in during economic hard times. Five of the thirteen houses on the dead-end street had some sort of camper parked in their driveways, chocked up on bricks, curtains closed against the heat. People were living in them full-time. So Scott and Eric knew it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see one more RV arrive on the street, nor would it be unusual if its sunshades permanently obscured all of its windows from the searing Arizona sun.
From the outside, the surveillance vehicle looked like a motor home on its last legs, its many badges from past trips appearing to do as much to hold the fiberglass skin together as the rivets themselves. The badges also suggested that the owners were happy albeit tired seniors, many of whose road trips belonged to another millennium: ‘W.B. Caravan Club–Wichita Meet 1991’; ‘We Bridged the Great Divide–1994’. It was plausible that the owners were ‘snowbirds’ – Northerners or Easterners who used to travel annually to southern Arizona for its warm winters but this year never left, their camper coming to rest in this dry subdivision while looking for a final parking place.
Inside the RV, the agents adjusted the antennae and activated a live video feed of the gold van. Eric prepared the receiver to pick up the audio from the listening device they would plant after dark. Scott called the rookies who were still on surveillance up the street and received confirmation that there hadn’t been any movement in or around the van during the night. He then informed them that they were relieved of duties. The agents heard the engine of the unmarked police car start, then fade as it drove away.
DAY SEVEN
Monday
FIFTEEN
Prickly Pear Close, Phoenix: High Noon. The beeping of a digital watch alarm woke Scott and he quickly pressed a button to silence it. He swung his legs over the side of the fully-made bed at the rear of the camper. His ankle-high boots were already on and he was dressed in combat pants and a t-shirt, so there wasn’t much more to do besides a few stretches, preferably avoiding banging his hands against the curved ceiling. He walked the two paces to the foot of the bed and pulled back the plastic accordion door that separated the bedroom from the main room.
Eric momentarily turned his head from monitoring a television screen. ‘Morning.’
‘Anything happening?’
‘Nope. All quiet on the western front.’
‘Got my breakfast?’
‘Your latte’s right here.’ Eric waved a packet of instant Maxwell House coffee.
Scott turned into the bathroom. It was too small for an adult to close the door and still be comfortable, so he left it open; he and his partner had been on enough long stakeouts to get over privacy issues. But the toilet’s holding pan had been filling inexorably, as the surveillance had only been broken by bathroom breaks or naps.
‘Would ya close the lid on that nuclear power plant, already?’ Eric called out.
Scott flushed the toilet and popped his head out of the bathroom doorway, already lathering his face with shaving cream. ‘Worried it’s going to curl your hair, darlin’?’
‘It’s interfering with the reception on this show I’m watching. Seems to have frozen the image for the past three minutes. Wait, make that six hours.’
Scott finished washing up. He emerged feeling like he’d woken up properly but nonetheless decided to make coffee to go with some energy bars.
He sat down next to Eric at the monitoring station. ‘Nothing on the audio either?’
Planting the listening device had been a quick operation that hadn’t afforded any examination of the van itself because some joyriding teenagers had chosen that moment to park in Prickly Pear Close to smoke marijuana, car windows open, listening to music in the dark. The teenagers had stayed until 4.30 a.m., by which time Scott had deemed it too close to daylight for them to try for an undetected examination of the van without knowing the sleep patterns of the street’s inhabitants. They would try again that night.
‘Just that same hum,’ replied Eric. He turned a dial on the audio receiver next to the video screen. A medium pitch, uninterrupted hum became more audible.
‘No fluctuation whatsoever?’
Eric shook his head and turned the volume dial down to its previous position.
‘And no sign of anyone? Not even the homeowners?’ Scott moved on to a second energy bar.
‘No, but it’s summer in Phoenix. If they didn’t get out before eight in the morning, they know better than to come out now.’
Eric pushed himself up from his seat in front of the monitoring station and made a note in the log they were keeping of their hours in the hot seat. Scott moved into the chair, downing the last of the coffee, his eyes already glued to the screen.
Eric walked to the bedroom but halted before closing the accordion door. ‘You made the bed for me. I’m so touched.’
Scott held up his middle finger in Eric’s direction without looking at him.
‘OK, I’m set for nineteen hundred hours unless a party starts,’ Eric said.
Scott settled into the chair, preparing for the challenge of maintaining a high energy level. He was always surprised that it was hard to sustain energy on a stakeout even though in terms of physical activity, it wasn’t all that different to his usual job behind a desk; sit at a screen of some sort all day, get up every now and then. There were fewer phone calls on a stakeout. Maybe that was it. He contemplated calling Jayne. He told himself it would just be to ascertain if she’d arranged to have the Agency checked for bugs.
He knew he wouldn’t call. It was one thing to think while watching the surveillance screen but it was
