She shrugged with her lips. “Could be. Or maybe it’s your basic psycho’s idea of fun.”
We circled around, aimlessly at first, as if motion alone might get us somewhere. I didn’t want to see Dallas for a while, not while the image of what we’d learned at the coroner’s office was still so fresh. The world didn’t need another monster, another Dahmer or Gacy.
Finally I suggested we head over to Carson & Rudd. I’d toyed with the idea of having her cruise past my house, see if the media was still camped outside, but I let it go. It didn’t matter. Let them sweat it out. Let them rot. It was their choice. I wanted to find out if I still had a job, and I wanted to see how Dale was holding up, if she’d managed to make it into the office that day.
When we went in, she was packing. One solitary cardboard box, half full of personal things from her desk. Her eyes were bright, glistening with unshed tears. She had on paint-spattered jeans and a faded UNR sweatshirt. This wasn’t work. This was goodbye.
I didn’t know what to say. Words had suddenly left me.
“I’m so sorry, Dale,” Jeri said.
Dale burst into tears. Jeri held her. Turns out they knew each other. In many ways, Reno is a small town. The two of them had had professional contact on occasion.
In an empty voice, Dale told me the police had impounded Gregory’s case files dating back two years, and that the courts were going to have to sort out what could be done with them before the police could dig in, given the confidentiality factor inherent in his work. Which I knew would turn up nothing. Greg had been eaten by the same spider that had eaten Sjorgen and Milliken, but that had nothing to do with his past work. The police probably knew that, but they had a job to do, scores of dead ends to chase down in order to make the paperwork look good. They had to work all the legal angles, too, which would lower their efficiency to less than 5 percent.
“What’ll happen to the business?” I asked her, once her tears had subsided.
“It belongs to his wife now, such as it is,” Dale said. “I imagine she’ll clear everything out in the next day or two. There’s eight hundred forty dollars in the account, six fifty due in rent on the first. And the phone. Building owner pays the power bill. I don’t think your wife’s check has cleared yet. I guess when that shows up, it’ll have to be refunded.”
“Where to now?” I asked, groping for words.
“Montpelier, New Hampshire.” Her eyes looked a thousand years old. “I have a sister there.” She placed a set of keys in the middle of her empty desk.
Where did all of this leave me?
I couldn’t bring myself to care. Maybe Libby was my employer since she owned the agency now, or maybe Dallas was, or maybe I was unemployed and could go apply at the nearest Home Depot, help people find plumbing connections.
Dale picked up her box and took one last look around the office. Then she looked me right in the eye and said, “He was going to leave his wife…Libby. We were going to be married.”
Then she was gone.
CHAPTER TEN
HISTORICALLY SPEAKING, IN the long line of Angels, Rudds, and others of that ilk roosting in the limbs of our staid family trees, life expectancy of the men runs to about ninety years. Other than my dad—who was so far off the charts he didn’t count—no one had had the imagination to die of anything remotely exciting, once the last Angel plunged to his death on Wall Street way back when. Like Maytags, we simply wore out. During a tepid existence of shuffling paper and managing other people’s money by way of low-risk and no-risk investments, that took a considerable length of time.
Gregory Rudd had had more zip in him than anyone had known, except for Dale. That zip had eventually killed him. He should’ve listened to the centuries-old calling of his genes.
I felt bad for Dale. In her final confession I sensed that Greg was all she’d had, all she thought she ever would have. Statistically, he should have lived another sixty years. And she’d seen him in his final hour, perched on his desk after having run, with blinders on, into that unknown black force moving through Reno’s streets. She shouldn’t have seen that.
And I, in my own unaccountable way, had helped contribute to his death. I felt lousy about that, too.
* * *
God knows why, but I figured Dallas would hate Jeri on sight, or vice versa. It would be a natural, mutual, instantaneous thing. Two gorgeous women, not enough of me to go around. Why wouldn’t they hate each other?
When I’m wrong, I do it up right.
We arrived at Dallas’s suite at the Grand Sierra. I introduced them, stuck around long enough to determine there wouldn’t be any immediate bloodshed, then went down to the casino’s gift shop to wear my silly moustache, buy Dallas a magazine, get myself the kind of shapeless, colorless hat you see on golf courses on the heads of men thirty years my senior—old guys who have given up all pretense of style and just want shade—and give the gals upstairs time to get acquainted, figure out which of them was going to be the alpha dog.
When I got back they were discussing 10K runs, racing tips, and their favorite jogging shoes, having already exchanged several low-fat recipes and a few priceless snippets about me, one of which may have included Jeri’s workout room.
I felt left out. I roamed the room, peeking out windows. From time to time, feminine laughter erupted. Finally I wandered over and stood over them. Dallas looked up, startled, as if she’d forgotten I was there.
“Am I still on the case?” I asked her,
