property in Mono County. A lot of it-one thousand acres.” He gave me the parcel number, adding that a map was on the way via e-mail.
I booted up my laptop in preparation for Keim’s incoming file, while asking Mick more questions about his health. The nurse wrested the phone from him as the e-mail arrived.
The map showing the location of Hanover’s property didn’t really surprise me. I guess at some level I’d suspected it all along: Hanover was the owner of Rattlesnake Ranch.
A wealthy man from the East Coast, who flew to his private airstrip in his own jet. A man who had been a New York City bartender who happened to get lucky because of his ingratiating manners and impressive knowledge of finance. A man whose financial empire and private life were now crumbling.
A man who, under his real name, held a degree from a prominent Eastern business school. Who had ceased to exist shortly after attaining that degree because he couldn’t risk the future possibility of being named a rapist, if for some reason his brother decided to tell the truth.
A man who used to be called Davey Smith.
Time to proceed slowly and cautiously. Build a case that no high-priced defense attorney could tear apart.
I couldn’t confide what I knew to Lark. In spite of her elation at our handling of Boz Sheppard, the woman seemed on the ragged edge. In fact, she’d called earlier from her home to tell me her superior officer had told her to take a day off. Her voice had been slurred, and I’d heard ice tinkling in the background. I didn’t want her alcohol- impaired judgment to get in my way.
Ramon was at the stable when I went out there, cleaning King’s stall. I asked if Amy was still at his house. Yes, she was. I said I was going over there, I needed to talk with her.
Before I left, I slipped King the carrots I’d brought for him.
Amy was clad in a bathrobe that enveloped her petite frame; I assumed it was Sara’s. She sat on the living- room couch, listlessly watching a game show while her aunt bustled around in the kitchen. I turned the TV set off and sat down next to her.
“How’re you doing?”
She shrugged.
“I hear everything went well with Kristen Lark.”
“Yeah, I like her.”
“I understand Hayley gave you a letter for safekeeping.”
“More like a big, thick envelope.”
“Did you open it?”
“No.”
“One thing in the envelope is a letter Boz Sheppard was looking for when he came to your cabin and cut you. I think he was going to look for it here too, when he saw the light on in the stable, spooked the horse, and hit me. He didn’t find it either place. Where is it?”
“… At Mrs. Ivins’ house. Dana Ivins, who runs Friends Helping Friends. I knew it wouldn’t be safe at Willow Grove or here, so I snuck over there and hid it in her garage.”
“Why didn’t you entrust it to Dana?”
“She’s nosy. I knew she’d read it.”
“But you didn’t read it.”
“I told you no. Hayley asked me not to.” Her eyes welled up and tears spilled down her cheeks. “I was upset with Hayley when I found out she’d been hooking all those years, and when I found out she was living with that loser Boz I felt even worse. But I still loved her, I would never pry into her private business. Now I wish I had; maybe she wouldn’t’ve gotten killed.”
I didn’t tell her that Hayley probably would have died of AIDS anyway since she apparently had forgone treatment. Amy didn’t need that kind of memory of her big sister.
Instead I said, “The other thing that’s in the envelope is a life-insurance policy Hayley took out on herself, with you as beneficiary. Since she was murdered, the double indemnity clause goes into effect. Eventually you’ll receive a hundred thousand dollars.”
Amy stared at me, her mouth opening in a little O.
“It’s up to you what you do with the money,” I went on. “Blow it on expensive cars and clothes and bad boyfriends. Or use it to give yourself a much better life than your mother and sister had.”
For a moment she looked away at the blank TV screen, envisioning any number of scenarios. Then: “I could finish up my GED and go to college.”
“Yes.”
“I could do something that would’ve made Mama and Hayley really proud of me.”
“That, too.”
Amy put her hands over her face and shook her head. “Oh, God!”
“What?”
“Oh, God, I’m all of a sudden so afraid.”
“Of what?”
“I’m afraid I’ll fuck up like I have over and over again.”
I grasped her wrists and pulled her hands from her face, looked into her eyes. “You have Ramon and Sara. You have Hy and me. You can be sure if you start to fuck up, one or the other-or all four of us-will tell you.”
Dana Ivins opened the side door to her garage, snapped on an overhead light. I followed her inside.
“There’s the storage cabinet,” she said, motioning to a hulking white assemble-it-yourself piece of the sort you can buy at Home Depot. Its doors were misaligned: one was at least two inches higher than the other.
I went over and reached behind the cabinet. Wedged against the wall beams exactly where Amy had described to me was a thick nine-by-seven envelope.
When I pulled it out, Ivins said, “Why, for God’s sake, did she hide it there, rather than give it to me? I could’ve put it in my safe.”
I shrugged. “She’s young and she wasn’t thinking too clearly, I suppose. Or maybe she thought your safe was too obvious a place and this envelope’s presence might’ve made you a target.”
“Amy always was a considerate girl. I’m so happy she’s safe with her uncle. What’s in the envelope?”
“I don’t know. Amy just asked me to retrieve it.”
“Maybe, for her sake, we should open it.”
“No, it’s her private property.”
“But it could shed some light on these killings-”
“If it can, Amy will turn the information over to the sheriff’s department. She’s been talking with them.”
“About what?”
“I haven’t been in on the conversations.”
Ivins looked disappointed. For a person who insisted on her organization’s right to confidentiality, she certainly played fast and loose with other people’s.
I drove a couple of blocks along the main street before I pulled to the curb and opened the envelope, as Amy had given me permission to do. It contained the insurance policy Hayley had taken out with her sister as beneficiary, and a smaller pink envelope with Hayley’s name written on it in erratic, badly formed penmanship. It had previously been opened, then closed with the flap slipped inside. I slid the letter out.
