“Of your breath,” I said. “You have a different kind of filthy mouth.”
He lunged. I swung the bag up toward his balls as hard as I could.
The bag hit Eric full in the face instead of his family jewels, making a satisfying cracking sound on his nose. I didn’t miss the more vulnerable target because I had aimed badly, but because Eric had already been on his way down to the asphalt. He hit it much harder than I had hit him.
I never saw exactly what it was Max had done to him, but he had moved like lightning.
Eric, in contrast, didn’t move at all.
“I’m almost sorry we aren’t on a date,” I said shakily. “Dragon slayers are so damned rare these days.”
“Come on,” Max said, putting an arm around my shoulders and hurrying me away. “We’d better get out of here.”
“Where did you learn to do that karate or whatever it was?”
“Military boarding schools, remember?”
I glanced back at Eric and saw that he was getting to his feet. I started running toward the car. Max ran, too.
We backed out just as Eric came at us from between parked cars. His face was bleeding down the front of his shirt. For a moment, I thought he was going to step in front of the Beemer, but Max hit the accelerator and Eric had at least enough sense left in him to stay back. We burned rubber out of the parking lot and drove lickety-split down a series of side streets, squealing around turns, braking hard, and narrowly missing objects mobile and immobile.
I don’t know if seconds or minutes passed that way. I do remember thinking that my father might outlive me after all, and worrying about who would take care of him. The things you think of when you are full of adrenaline.
Almost as suddenly as our wild ride began, it ended. Max pulled over to the curb of a suburban street and parked in the shade of a big oak tree. We sat there, listening to the little clicks and small noises of a cooling engine. He rolled the windows down. Birds chirped up in the tree, a soft breeze blew, and I could hear the stutter of a pulsating lawn sprinkler two houses away.
We were both shaking.
“I’ve probably made you late to work,” he said, “so I’ll take the book back to the library for you.”
Don’t ask me why, but this struck me as one of the funniest things anyone had said in the twentieth century. I started laughing, and so did he.
When we paused for breath, he added, “You’ll have to tell me how to get out of here. I’m lost.”
That set off another round of laughter.
I looked at him, and what I wanted to do, in all honesty, was kiss the hell out of him. I would swear that he was looking at me in exactly the same way. But neither of us leaned closer, and the moment passed, and we both looked out the front windshield as if the scenery before us would change somehow, must have changed with whatever else had just changed.
“If you go straight ahead to that intersection,” I said, “I can read the street sign and probably guide us from there.”
“Okay,” he said, and started the car.
I figured out where we were and gave him directions until we reached streets he knew. He talked about how someday his GPS devices would be in cars and guide people to their destinations, even if they were in totally unfamiliar places.
It sounded a little far-fetched to me, but that wasn’t what really bothered me about it. “Getting lost isn’t always so bad, is it?” I asked. “I mean, if you only go where you intend to go, and travel only on the recommended roads, you only see what everybody else sees all the time. You miss the out-of-the-way places.”
He smiled and said, “Those who want to be adventurous can simply turn the GPS off.”
“Or disobey it.”
He laughed and said, “You don’t need a dragon slayer, you’ll take care of them on your own.” He glanced over at me, then back at the road. “Hurry and finish that story, Irene Kelly.”
34
I WAS SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT O’CONNOR HADN’T COME BACK IN YET, and wondered what he might be up to. I had plenty to work on, though. I started writing the story of how Max Ducane was reacting to the news that he could not possibly be the lost heir, and telling, for the first time anywhere, why he had accepted Warren Ducane’s offer. O’Connor hadn’t been able to get that story out of Max.
With some reluctance, I called Lillian Linworth. I wanted to reach her before Max came home. She was understandably still upset about yesterday’s discoveries, but said that she was not about to ask Max to stop using her grandson’s name. “Max is a good man, and his support and presence here have been a great comfort. You saw him today, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I interviewed him at lunch.”
“Oh.” She sounded a little disappointed.
“He tells me that you want him to live in your daughter’s house.”
“If he wants to, yes.”
“Any chance I could look through it before the change in ownership?”
There was a long silence, then she said, “If Max goes with you, I don’t see a problem.”
“Do you know about the reward?”
“Reward?”
“He’s offering a twenty-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderers of…well, Max Ducane. And Kathleen and Todd.”
“Is he?” she said, clearly surprised. “What a wonderful idea. Please print that I will match that amount.”
I called Lefebvre to get his reaction. “Isn’t that great?” I asked him. “That’s more money than most people make in a year.”
“It may help,” he said.
“You sound tired.”
“Didn’t get much sleep. You know, the first twenty-four years in a homicide investigation are the ones that matter most.”
“Years? I thought it was hours.”
“I have never,” he said sadly, “been good at making jokes.”
“No, I’m just not up to your speed.”
I guess I had made a joke, because that made him laugh.
“So, Phil, will it help?”
“It might. It might also keep us busy chasing false leads. But on a case this old, it will probably be a good thing.”
“Any hope of getting fingerprints from the car?”
“Certainly. You and that construction crew put your paws all over it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Tough call. I think we’ll have better luck with hair and fibers.”
“Bloodstains?”
“Yes.”
“You are intentionally being irritating.”
“Picked up on that, did you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Irene, I am irritated by this case. But perhaps offering this big reward will bring us an honest eyewitness, and not just a lot of greedy so-and-sos. What do you think my chances are?”
“Get some sleep. I’ll let you know if I find anything at the Ducane mansion.”
