“Ma Clary?”
“Maude, but you’ll end up calling her Ma like everyone else. If you don’t, she’ll have your kidneys for breakfast.”
“You don’t sound like you’re kidding.”
“I’m not. You’ll see.”
It was Sunday, so Maude Clary was in a housecoat when we got there. She had a beer in one hand, cigarette in the other. She lived in a three-story house on Arlington, south of California Avenue, half a mile from downtown Reno. The third floor was all dormer windows so the rooms up there would have mostly sloped ceilings. Two other women about the same age lived with her. One was a widowed sister, Agnes Villars, the other a tenured political science professor at the university, Colleen Pesarik.
Ma was a fireplug—five four, a hundred eighty-five pounds, with substantial low-slung breasts, a forty-two-inch waist, and a demeanor that suggested where Jeri had gotten hers—that pit bull attitude I’d experienced the day Jeri and I first met. Temperament like that is often transferred via a kind of osmosis. Maude was sixty-one, thirty-two years older than Jeri. She was Jeri’s mentor while Jeri was working on her PI license. Funny it had never occurred to me to ask Jeri who’d trained her. Guess we were having too much fun in that new bed after I’d convalesced. In fact, considering that naked bike ride thing that was in the works, Jeri and I still had quite a bit of that gettin’-to-know-you stuff to talk about.
Ma was the Big Gun. In the first minute I had her pegged as a .44 Magnum. Even a licensed PI needs professional help every once in a while. Ma was a PI with an office downtown, as I found out later—Clary Investigations. She’d been in the business thirty-five years and had contacts and sources in the community like the roots of a banyan tree. She’d done favors, made friends, and evidently had the goods on a few folks in the city’s and county’s law enforcement agencies and the DA’s office, not to mention down at the state legislature in Carson City. Later I discovered she had a few useful friends whose livelihoods weren’t strictly legal.
Ma looked me over. “Couldn’t see how tall he was on TV,” she said to Jeri. “From down here, he’s a big’n.”
“I’m even shorter. You should see him from here.”
“I’d like to see him from down there,” Ma said, “but you two’re engaged.”
“Hey, there’s another person in this room,” I said.
“Who happens to be the topic of conversation, doll,” Ma said. “Get used to it.” She took a pull on her beer, and it was only a few minutes past noon.
Pit bull.
Bare feet flapping in mules, Ma led us into a sitting room. It had a six-thousand-dollar chandelier and wickedly ornate cream and burgundy velveteen wallpaper, which, against all odds and logic, wasn’t hideous. The house was huge, five bedrooms, four baths, but it was home to three women, so I thought it had to be huge to avoid trouble. Suppositions like that are going to hang me up at the Pearly Gates, I just know it.
Inside and out, the house was a jewel. An aura of money hung in the air, oozing out of the walls. Not millions, but it was clear that these old gals weren’t hurting.
Ma plopped down on a couch with a flowery design, looked at me, and patted the place next to her. “Right here, darlin’. Sit.”
Darlin’ sat. Jeri smiled and took an overstuffed chair, facing Ma and me across a glass-topped coffee table held up by porcelain cherubs. Okay, that bordered on hideous.
Ma patted my knee with a pudgy hand that resembled a ham. She looked at Jeri. “Okay, hon, what’s up? Been a while since I’ve seen you. Not since the hospital.” She turned to me. “And you, big guy. Person’d never know you took a sword in the chest. You look pretty fit.”
“He is,” Jeri said. All she’d had was a mild concussion, so her stay in the hospital back in August wasn’t as long as mine. Mine had involved bedpans and unmentionable procedures.
“Yeah?” Ma said, distracted from her initial question.
“Very.”
“Well, that sounds good, since you two’re gettin’ hitched.”
“Real good,” I said, injecting myself into the flow, which got me another pat on the knee.
“So,” Ma said to Jeri. “What’s goin’ on? You got somethin’ needs special handling?”
“I think so. We’re hitting a dead end on a vehicle. All we’ve got is a description: green Mercedes SUV, new. A G550. Owners and addresses aren’t anything we recognize.”
“At least it isn’t a goddamn white Chevy sedan two to five years old. Then you’d be down shit creek.”
“Isn’t that up shit creek?” I asked, stepping in it.
Ma looked at me. “Up shit creek, you could float back. Down shit creek without a paddle, you’re hosed. Never understood that ‘up shit creek’ crapola.”
Pit bull.
“So what you’re wantin’ is deep background on the owners,” Ma said, facing Jeri again. “See if anything useful turns up.”
“Uh-huh.”
Ma looked up at me. “It’s not strictly kosher, digging around like that without a court order, which we’d never get.”
“Yup. Got that.”
“Not strictly kosher—meaning, it’s frickin’ illegal, boyo.”
“Yup. Makin’ my Boy Scout ears flame red.”
Ma guffawed, then turned to Jeri. “It’d help if I had an idea what names would’ve rung a bell with you, if it ain’t the owners.”
Jeri nodded at me. “Mort? You’re up.”
I looked at Ma. The top of her head came to about my chin. “Names that’d ring a bell, huh? I’ve got a good one for you.”
“Yeah? Shoot.”
“Harold J. Reinhart.”
Silence like we were swaddled in London fog for ten seconds. Then, “Well, hell, that’s a good one all right.”
She fished in a pocket, came up with a pack of Camels and a Zippo. She lit up as neatly as a Marine, blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.
Camels. Holiday’s brand when she was fake smoking in a bar. Ma wasn’t faking, though. Her voice had a little gritty rasp to it.
“Dicey,” she said. “Reinhart. Could set off alarm bells
