No information. Perfect. A glance behind her told me the house was well kept, with decent furniture, good carpet. A Mercedes SUV might be a stretch, but maybe not. The mortgage on this place would be half of what it would be in Reno.
“I’ll stop by later if I can’t find Bill,” I said. “Bill Dellario. I’d really like to see him, or find out what happened to him.”
I wasn’t sure how that pile of lies was going down, but her face didn’t change expression. She looked like a nice person. And she didn’t fit the description of the thirty-something woman who’d been driving Allie around—if it was Allie. But she could have a daughter about the right age and the DMV said the Harrises owned a green Mercedes SUV, so the situation was still fluid.
“You could come in and wait,” Martin’s wife said. “I’ve got a pot of coffee on.”
“Thank you kindly, ma’am. But there’s a few things I ought to do in town. I’ll stop by later if I haven’t tracked Bill down.”
“I’ll let Marty know. Well, I guess that’d be sort of hard since I didn’t get your name.” She smiled at me.
“Earl,” I said. “Earl Johnson.” Damn good thing that popped out. I could see myself hopping around, face red, cheeks puffed out, looking like a real winner as I tried to come up with a name.
“Earl, I’m Janet. My husband is Martin—Marty.”
I said good-bye and left, drove back to the supermarket. Holiday was outside, talking with an elderly man in the parking lot. They were standing beside a green Mercedes SUV. The old guy had his door open but he wasn’t going anywhere. I pulled up three spaces away. As I watched, Holiday took off her sweatshirt, shook out her hair, pushed her chest out another inch as she took several seconds to turn her sweatshirt inside out, then put it back on. Inside out? But she’d gotten the bulky thing off and had the old guy’s full attention. I sat in the car watching them talk, then got out and circled far enough around the Mercedes to catch Holiday’s eye, then went into the Scolari’s.
She came in five minutes later.
“How’d it go out there?” I asked.
“It’s not them. I mean, that’s not the SUV people have been seeing up around Gerlach.”
“How’d you get that?”
“Marty and I are buddies. I asked him how he likes his car and we got to talking.”
“Uh-huh. Marty liked your chest, too.”
“What he could see of it when I thought to turn my sweatshirt inside out. I didn’t want him to leave right away. Anyway, he was rear-ended down in Vegas a week and a half ago and his car’s been in the shop since then. He got it back two days ago.”
“That’s convenient. Wonder if we can verify that.”
“I got the name of the body shop. He said they did a ‘real fine’ job so I asked him for the name in case I ever need one.”
“I’ll have your gumshoe license printed up in the morning.”
She beamed at me, then took me by the arm and led me out to the Toyota. “Okay, now I want a shower. Then dinner.”
“A shower, huh?”
“That’s right.” She gave me a look. “You up for that?”
A shower? With Holiday? Nope.
“Nope,” I said, just to avoid confusion later.
She made a face at me.
We drove back to the Mizpah and went up to our room. She started removing clothes, sweatshirt and T-shirt first. “A shower, Mort? That’s all, I promise.” She looked down at herself. “Except . . . you could help me wash these.”
“Looks like a big job, but no, I’m good.”
She made another face then pulled off her jeans, folded them, set them carefully on a chair. She strolled to the bathroom in panties, then turned and stood in the doorway.
“Last chance.”
“Go ahead. I’ll read.” I’d already got my Lescroart book out of a duffel bag. I held it up, showed it to her.
“Spoilsport. Jeri okayed it, by the way.”
“Okayed what?”
“Us, showering. You know, if it happened to happen.”
I stared at her. “She did?”
“Uh-huh. A shower, no serious touching. But, yeah.”
“Serious touching? What the hell’s that mean?”
“She didn’t spell it out exactly. But I think it meant the sort of thing that might tend to escalate—which I promise it wouldn’t.”
“Sounds like something that could’ve used more clarification. But the point’s moot anyway. Y’all have yourself a nice scrub.”
“Your loss.”
“Go.”
She went. I believe it’s a sign of ongoing maturity that I read another ten pages of Lescroart’s A Plague of Secrets while Holiday got wet and naked and I could have been in there, and possibly some sort of limited touching had been okayed by my dippy fiancée with whom I was going to have to have another in-depth talk even though she’d spouted some nonsense about hoping our last talk would be the end of it.
Don’t think so, Jeri.
Holiday came out au naturel, doing something impromptu with a towel that might’ve been an inept attempt to dry off. I think that’s what she was doing, but it had the flavor of something done decades ago onstage with ostrich feathers.
“Your turn,” she said. “Unless you want to watch while I dry my hair.”
I set the book down. She looked terrific—slender hips, three-quarter Brazilian trim, great legs, flat stomach. Jeri trusted me. She had encouraged me to give Holiday this, but after half a minute my retinas started to overheat so I got up and headed for the bathroom.
“Gonna shower in your clothes again?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“You could undress out here, not get your clothes damp in that fog in there.”
“Maybe next time.”
Hands on hips, she stared at me. “Have you never been naked in the presence of a woman before? I mean, really.”
I went into the bathroom.
She stuck her head in. “Hey, fair is fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, kiddo.”
I shut the door and locked it. From the other side I heard a muffled voice say, “For the record, I’ve seen erections before.”
Great.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DINNER WAS
