“Where are you?”
“L.A.X. They’ve been very cooperative. Mrs. McKinnon seems to have been here last night. She took a plane from Chicago to here, flew to San Francisco and back, met a man at a long-term parking lot, and drove off in the moonlight.”
“It’s not often you get to see such romance in this day of cynics and nihilists,” said Grapelli. “Where does that leave us?”
“Chicago could mean she had gone to look for evidence or witnesses in the Dahlman case. Or it could mean she just happened to change planes there. San Francisco is a mystery, because she was there for no more than an hour or two. Since nobody has turned up a suspicious prescription for Dahlman’s antibiotic yet, maybe she was making a black-market buy. L.A. could mean something.”
“L.A. means just about as much as Chicago,” said Grapelli. “Who’s the guy?”
“He’s a private detective–slash–bounty hunter. But since she wanted to meet with him, I have to assume he’s on her side.”
Grapelli’s silence had a sour sound to it. Finally he said, “Do we know what the hell it is that her side wants to accomplish?”
“I have a theory,” Marshall offered.
“Do you?”
“I think that she’s got part of this situation figured out pretty clearly. Her husband definitely had something to do with Dahlman’s escape, so he’s in trouble. Her house has been under surveillance for long enough so she knows that nobody’s going to write him off and go home. What’s her way out? I’m not saying it’s a safe way, or a smart way, just that it’s a way, and there aren’t any others.”
“Divorce the stupid bastard and claim she knew nothing?”
“I mean for both of them,” said Marshall. “Go out on her own and prove that Dahlman didn’t do it.”
“Give me a break,” muttered Grapelli.
“Think about it,” said Marshall. “If Dahlman stays out, does that help her and her husband? No. We’ll watch them until the end of time. If Dahlman gets caught, does that end it? No. It’s worse, because we’d have no reason to keep their home intact waiting for Dahlman to call or show up. They’d be subject to arrest. But what does get them off?”
“Very optimistic of her,” said Grapelli. “Only, if Dahlman does come in, even if he’s got absolute proof that somebody else killed that woman, the McKinnons are still guilty—aiding and abetting, obstruction of justice, and so on.”
“She’s blinded by love,” said Marshall. “Otherwise she’d know that you’re going to demand federal prosecution of a reputable surgeon and his beautiful wife who helped an innocent elderly doctor stay out long enough to solve our case for us.”
“Well, probably not,” admitted Grapelli. “But she can’t know that.”
“What else has she got to think about?”
“Very interesting theory, anyway,” said Grapelli. “One of your better ones.”
“Thank you,” said Marshall. “It’s nice to feel that I’m growing as a theorist, especially in these times when I’m unable to actually put anything into practice.”
Grapelli’s voice changed. It was lower and quieter, and the ironic edge was gone. “I’m afraid I wasn’t calling to check up on you, John. I was calling to tell you what’s going on here.”
“About time,” said Marshall. He could tell it was something he was not going to like, and he could tell Grapelli knew it and felt he still had to do it. Marshall determined to keep his feelings to himself.
“It’s time to bring her home. Since she seems to have a flair for going where she pleases without being picked up, I only know one way to do it.”
Marshall reminded himself that he was going to keep the disapproval out of his voice. “I have no way to prove this, but I think we’re giving up on the strategy too early. But it’s your call, and I respect that.”
“Thanks, John,” said Grapelli. “You want to come back to be there when she comes in?”
Marshall thought for a moment. “If you need me, I will. But I have a few leads I’d like to check here. This bounty hunter she met ought to be interviewed, and if he gives the right answers, I might be able to follow her in. Somebody should try to see where she stops on the way home.”
“We’ll call when she shows.”
37
Carey sensed that something had changed. There was an odd, charged feel to the air. While he was in the shower, he kept imagining that he heard not sounds, but parts of sounds coming from somewhere in the old house—doors opening but not closing, single footfalls that were not repeated.
He turned the handle and heard nothing but the last of the water falling from the showerhead and making tiny pops as each drop shattered on the tile near his feet. He dressed quickly. He was sure now that he had picked up some alteration that was too subtle to be identified, and his own mind had supplied the explanation that it must be a sound.
Carey went from room to room, not sure whether he was doing this to verify that the police had not come into his house or because of his growing suspicion that his time had run out. That was it: he had given it a name. He was looking into each of the rooms in the house where he had grown up because he was afraid he might never see them again. He glanced at his watch. It was all right, he decided. If this was the day, then he had done it. If it wasn’t, then let this serve as the last look. He would not need to look again.
He walked down the staircase to the small foyer and through the living room and the dining room to the big old kitchen to make his breakfast. As he was taking out the eggs and the frying pan he suddenly stopped. Somehow he had a feeling that this morning he should leave the kitchen spotlessly clean, with no dishes in the dishwasher and nothing out of place.
He went out the back door and locked it, then to the old carriage house in the back that his grandfather had been the first to call “the garage,” and glanced at the yard. The two gigantic maple trees behind the house that shaded the windows of the master bedroom reminded him of the day he had shown Jane the revised deed. It now said Carey McKinnon and Jane McKinnon. She had chuckled at the idea, and he had asked her why. She had said, “Because I love you and because people are so funny.”
“Funny? Why?”
She had left him standing in the back entry and run the sixty or seventy feet to the trunk of the taller maple tree. She had called, “Look at me.” The trunk was nearly four feet wide at the base, and at this distance he could use her height as a measure and count upward ten times to the tallest branches. It had been big and old before his grandparents were born. He had walked out to stand ten feet from her.
She had bent back to look up at the huge, thick limbs, some of the lower ones wider around than her body, and his eyes had followed hers. “See?”
He had nodded. “So what’s funny?”
She had raised an eyebrow. “Do you think it knows that I own it?”
Carey got into his black BMW. The car was perhaps his only idiotic purchase. It had cost too much, but he decided he was glad about that too. Even if this was the last time he drove it, and it had to be sold while he was in jail, it hardly mattered now. There was no sense in having a few more dollars for a retirement he and Jane would never reach, or for children who would never be born.
He pulled out of his driveway and watched the car behind him to see whether the policemen did anything differently. They stayed the usual two blocks behind him, drifting along near the curb because he was close to the median stripe. The other cars nearby weren’t familiar and didn’t seem to have policemen in them, but he knew that such impressions meant nothing.
He drove to the hospital by the usual route, introducing no changes. He certainly didn’t want to behave erratically and precipitate some action they were only contemplating. If they were already committed, then he would gain no advantage by letting them know that he suspected.
