He glanced around, motioned to one of the other employees on the floor. “Fifteen minutes. No more.”
They went out onto the sidewalk and stood beside a window displaying slow cookers and books on using them. Ben crossed his arms on his chest, an intricately braided silver bracelet on his left wrist gleaming in the sun. He tilted his blond head and waited as if for some crushing blow.
Julia said, “I haven’t found Larry, no. But something’s come up and I need to ask you some additional questions.”
“What happened to your nose? And your eyes-they’re kinda black.”
“Car accident.” She waved dismissively.
“You oughta drive more carefully. Bad karma around your agency. Your boss-I read in the paper that she was shot. How is she?”
“She’s… not good.”
“Is she going to live?”
“They don’t know. Right now she’s stabilized.”
He shook his head. “This city, the violence. Does she remember what happened to her?”
“I don’t know. She can’t communicate at present. About my questions…?”
“Yes?”
“Was Larry happy in his work here?”
“Not really. I mean, stocking shelves-how many of us are content with that kind of work? At least I get to interact with customers and I’ve got outside interests and future prospects. I think I told you I’m moving to LA next week. It’s only a couple of commercials, but I’ve got an agent and he promises me more work. But Larry, he’d been kicked out of three colleges and had no future except going back to the Sonoma Valley and learning the wine- making business under his father’s thumb.”
“Are those your words or his-‘under his father’s thumb’?”
“His.”
“I thought he was close to his parents.”
“He was, but the life up there can be confining, and his dad can be extremely demanding.”
“But still he’d given his notice here and was moving home.”
“It was the money, that’s what finally got to him.”
“The money?”
“Well, sure. That’s a successful vineyard his old man has, and very valuable land. Besides, his parents offered him a bribe to come home-a hundred thousand dollars, cash. Larry claimed he was going to collect and then the two of us would head for Tahiti or South America, but I didn’t believe him.”
“You didn’t tell me this before.”
Gold averted his eyes, fiddling with his bracelet, a flush spreading up his neck. “It’s tough to admit you’ve been dumped. But dump me was what Larry did. Took his hundred thou and split without me. He’s probably having a great life someplace-with somebody else.”
Except that the hundred thousand had been hidden in his parents’ tack room since he disappeared.
And Julia seriously doubted it had come from the Peeples.
RAE KELLEHER
The lead she’d been seeking was in Angie Atkins’s file, buried deep, where Rae’s eyes-tired since the night Shar was shot-hadn’t noticed it before. A notation in the police report of the personal property on Atkins’s body: “1 high-school class ring.”
Jesus, why hadn’t the cops followed up on that? And what high school was it from?
Sunday. She had only two contacts on the SFPD, and she doubted either would be on duty or eager to access the information. But Adah could: she was no longer on the job, but she could navigate the system.
“Hell yes,” Adah said when Rae called her. “Anything to narrow down who attacked Shar. But it’s totally illegal. Will you visit me in prison?”
“Every week, with a file baked into hash brownies.”
“Good woman.”
Rae hung up the receiver and drummed her fingertips on the desktop while looking around the office. Water stains at the top of the far wall, carpet showing wear. Today when she’d come up the stairs to the catwalk they’d creaked ominously. Shar, with the help of her powerful attorney friend Glenn Solomon-who seemed to have something on everybody in city government-had negotiated a good deal with the port commission for an extended lease, but maybe it was time to think of moving on. She’d have to talk to Shar about it-
Shit! She couldn’t.
Phone. Adah.
“The ring was from Acalanes High School, class of oh-six.”
“Acalanes?”
“East Bay. Near Walnut Creek, I think.”
“How’d they miss that?”
“Dead hooker, overload of cases, and they probably didn’t care all that much.”
“
“I don’t know, maybe toward the end I would’ve. I was getting to the point where I didn’t give a shit, either.”
“Well, thanks for running the check.”
“No problem. Craig’s been off on some lead since Friday night. I got so bored this afternoon that I went to the animal shelter and came back with two kittens.”
“I was wondering if you’d ever get another after Charley died. And now two!”
“Tortoiseshells-sisters, around six months old. Lots of energy. They’re tearing the place apart.”
“What’re you calling them?”
“That One and the Other One, till Craig gets back to consult.”
“Well, good luck. And thanks again.”
Damn! Why had she stumbled on this lead on a Sunday? In summer, no less, when school was out and staff members only came in to work on a sporadic basis?
Rae broke the connection and turned to her keyboard. Googled Acalanes High School, and got its address on Pleasant Hill Road in the East Bay suburb of Lafayette. The school’s site had a list of people to contact for various types of information: Rae copied the page. Then she began to search the East Bay phone books.
“Information on students and former students is confidential,” Jane Koziol, counseling secretary of the high school, said when Rae reached her at her home number in Walnut Creek. “But if this girl has been murdered… You say you want me to identify a photograph?”
“Yes. Apparently she wasn’t using her real name. Her family hasn’t been notified of her death, and the closure would be very important to them.”
“… And you’re a licensed private investigator?”
“Working with the Bay Area Victims’ Advocates.”
“All right. I have a fax machine. Send me your credentials and the photograph. If the girl graduated in oh-six, it’s likely I’ll recognize her.”
“I can fax a copy of my license and the photo in a few minutes.”
“Fine. Where can I reach you?”
Rae gave the agency’s phone number.
“I’ll be in touch.”
When Koziol called back an hour later, she sounded shaken. “I’m sorry it took so long to get back to you, but I decided to talk with my attorney first.”
“No problem. It’s what I would’ve done.”
“The girl in the photograph is Alicia Summers. I… God, I can’t believe it!”
“What can you tell me about her?”
