farther she went with him behind her, the greater the possibility that he would learn something about her that she didn't want him to know.
There was only one traffic light on this route before the road took them into the city of Lompoc. She would drive fast around the bend, across the bridge to the traffic light. If it was red she would go through it, and if he was guilty he would, too. If it was green she would wait for it to turn red. If he was guilty he would wait with her.
Jane pressed harder on the gas pedal and increased her speed. She was going over sixty before she reached the end of Klein Boulevard. She slowed only enough to make the turn without spinning off into a field. Her tires squealed a little, but she kept the car in control, and accelerated again. This time she built her speed to sixty-five and held it as she drove on, checking her mirror. The other car peeked out from behind the van, then veered around it into the left lane to pass. The car kept accelerating, trying to keep Jane's Cadillac in sight.
The time was coming for Jane to make her move. She could see the start of the curve ahead, just a place where the road seemed to dissolve. She took the bend in the road and then knew what she wanted. Jane hit her brakes, pulled off onto the right shoulder, and stopped. The dark blue car had been accelerating to catch up with her, and as it came around the bend, it could barely hold the road. Jane saw the front dip down, then dip again as the driver applied the brakes, but it was moving far too fast to stop in time. The car slowed only to about thirty as it went past her, the driver fighting to slow it down.
The driver was a woman. She appeared to be in her thirties, with long hair that appeared slightly unnatural as though it had been straightened and dyed coal black. She glared at Jane, and the expression on her face was a mixture of anger and fear. It was clear that she knew she had failed to keep Jane from noticing her and by slamming on her brakes she had convicted herself of trying to follow her. The woman was no longer anonymous.
Jane could see that the woman had a Bluetooth mic on her ear, and was talking to somebody on the telephone as she skidded past.
Jane pulled out onto the road after her. The woman saw Jane's car in the mirror and began to accelerate. Jane accelerated, too, coming up behind the woman fast, as though she meant to come up on her left and force her off the road. The traffic signal at the intersection was visible now and turning yellow, then red. The woman added more speed as she approached the bridge. Her car bounced when the tires hit the metal seam between pavement and bridge, and Jane could see that she was going to run the light.
Jane stayed behind her, but before they reached the red light, Jane took her foot off the gas pedal and fell back. The woman was watching Jane, and she didn't see until the last moment that there was a truck coming into the intersection on the cross street from the left. She made a panicky attempt to avoid it by standing on her brakes, but the driver of the truck had seen her coming and begun to stop, too. They were entering the intersection at the same time.
The woman wrenched her wheel to the right and hit the gas pedal to swing into a right turn around the corner. The truck driver saw what she was doing and swerved to the left to avoid her, so both the woman's car and the truck moved off down the road side by side, the truck in the left lane and the car in the right.
Jane accelerated past them both and through the intersection. Even though the light was still red, there was no other vehicle coming. She kept going into the business district of the city of Lompoc, made a few quick turns to be sure the woman couldn't find her easily if she tried to catch her, and then drove on residential streets until she reached the next intersection with a busy street, turned and followed it to the entrance to Interstate 101. There was no question in Jane's mind that the woman would know she had come to Lompoc from somewhere nearby, almost certainly Santa Barbara, an hour to the south. Jane drove to the right onto the northbound entrance and drove hard toward San Francisco.
She reached San Francisco in the late afternoon, and stopped at the Bank of America branch on Market Street where she kept an account in the name of Valerie Collins. The teller seemed only mildly surprised when she withdrew four thousand dollars in cash. The teller in the Wells Fargo branch up the street behaved the same when Carol Stevens withdrew thirty-five hundred in cash from her account just before closing time. As long as the amount wasn't large enough so they had to fill out extra forms, everybody seemed to be unconcerned. It was clear now that Christine was going to have to keep a low profile and pay for everything in cash for a longer time than Jane had anticipated. She would have to visit a few more banks in the months before she returned to Minneapolis to pick her up.
In the early evening she stood at the car rental at the Oakland airport. She turned in the car she had rented in Santa Barbara, then took the shuttle to the terminal. The first flight to the east that had an empty seat to sell her was headed for Atlanta, but she took it. She knew that when she got there she would have to get on a flight to Philadelphia or Newark in order to catch another one for Buffalo. The trip would probably take her the rest of the night and most of the next day, but if she got home by midnight it would still be Saturday, technically.
Jane went through the security checkpoint, watching the crowds, searching for familiar faces. As soon as she was beyond the check-point she went into a ladies' room and put on the blond wig and the outfit she had worn when she had flown to Santa Barbara. On her way to the gate where her flight to Atlanta would be boarding, Jane stopped at a pay telephone and dialed the number of the apartment in Minneapolis.
There was no answer, but the voice mail kicked in. Jane was pleased to hear the generic female voice the phone company had chosen to personify it. 'We're sorry, but the customer at this number is not able to answer right now. If you would like to leave a message, begin speaking after the tone.' After a few seconds, the tone sounded, and Jane said, 'Hi. It's me. I wanted to let you know that I visited your father today. He's fine, and he said to tell you he loves you very much. He understands exactly why you couldn't be there, and that you won't be able to visit in person. He said he wanted to be absolutely sure you knew he didn't blame you for anything that's happened, and he's very glad about his grandchild. I told him how to get in touch with me when he's out. So don't worry about him. I should tell you that there was a woman waiting in the parking lot of the prison when I came out, and she tried to follow me to you. She had long hair—dyed an unnatural black. I suppose it could be a wig. I'll see you in a couple of months. Stay safe.' She hung up, moved off, and walked past her gate, scanning the waiting areas near it for familiar, unwelcome faces.
17
Andy Beale sat in his study and listened to what Grace Kandinsky, his private detective, had to tell him about her day of watching Richard's hired woman at the prison. After a time he realized that he was sitting with the phone pressed against his ear and wincing. The whole situation had turned into a disaster, in spite of all his advice. It wasn't that difficult, either. Richard's people had known the woman would be coming, and probably bringing Christine with her. All they really had to do was wait outside the prison for her to walk right into their trap. Instead, they had sent one woman to sit in the parking lot to watch for her. Their attempt had been stupid, inadequate, and halfhearted. When she sounded as though she had finished her report, he said, 'Is that it?'
'That's it,' she said.
'Then you can come home now. Send me a bill.'
'You bet I will.'
Andy Beale hung up, put on his sport coat, walked out to the car and began to drive. When he reached the freeway and turned south toward La Jolla, Beale only got angrier. Richard had been a disappointment when he was in nursery school, and he had never improved. He had been a mama's boy without being particularly nice to his mother. That probably should have been a sign and a warning. The kid had wanted every bit of Ruby's attention twenty-four hours a day, but when he had her attention, he used it to make her miserable—whining, crying, and complaining.
Throughout childhood, Richard was always too hot or too cold. He was hungry but he hated whatever food she gave him, cranky and sleepy but never willing to go to bed and give everybody a rest. In school he was a bully, but he got beaten up more often than the school's weakest kids because he was so cowardly about only picking on them that he attracted bigger bullies. The reason why Andy and Ruby Beale had started spying on him after he was in high school was that he was so damned sneaky.
Richard was always hiding things he had but wasn't supposed to have, lying about things he did, and pretending he had done things he hadn't. By Richard's junior year in high school, Andy Beale had seen exactly as many fake report cards as real ones. The fakes always arrived early. When the fakes came, Andy would wait a week and call the school to ask that a set of duplicates be sent to his office. He never explained to anyone at the school
