The Smart Money

by Lia Matera

  He ran a hand over the back of his silver waves, grinning sheepishly. “Well, I was invited.”

  “But that’s not the main reason you’re here? Are you keeping an eye on me?” I took a quick gulp of my drink. No use sipping cheap vodka.

  “I wouldn’t put it like that.” The captain’s face crinkled with concern. “You’re a pro, Miss Di Palma. As good as they get at what you do, I guess. Well—” He shrugged. “I like to think I am, too, even if Hillsdale is a smallish sort of place to do it in. So I won’t lie to you. Sure I’m interested in you. And your friend.” He gestured toward the dining room, into which Sandy had just vanished. “But I’m not keeping tabs on you or anything like that. More just getting a feeling for you, if you understand me.”

  “So now you know I’m not particularly fond of my aunt.” I held up my drink. “And that I like this stuff straight up.”

  He smiled apologetically. “I guess I know a little more than that.”

  “Such as?” So much for the first rule of cross-examination.

  “Well,” his smile was avuncular, “I’d say that tall fellow”—again he gestured toward the dining room—“better keep an eye on your cousin.”

  I assumed—then, at least—that he meant romantically.

  We were interrupted by a chipper brunette who bubbled over with “big plans” for the next reunion of our high school class. I listened, hoping I wouldn’t be around long enough to attend. Captain Loftus excused himself somewhere between the name tags with yearbook pictures on them and the testimonial plaque for our beloved English teacher.

  It took me five or ten minutes to escape the woman’s cloying enthusiasm. I made my way past the dining room buffet (no sign of Sandy), and slipped out the kitchen door.

  I stood on the redwood deck inhaling cold wind and watching planters of fuchsia swing on their wire hangers. What if Mrs. Oriellini was right? Captain Loftus was certainly clever enough to recognize a situation that might ruin his son. He was also clever—and fatherly—enough to do something about it.

  I rubbed my arms to warm them. The silk felt like slick ice.

  If Loftus had run that hose from the VW’s exhaust pipe to the front window, it definitely complicated matters. But I wasn’t sure it changed anything.

  I tiptoed through the well-lit side yard, trying to keep my four-inch heels from sinking into the damp lawn.

  I thought I heard someone or something moving through the tall rhododendrons separating the yard from the gully beside it.

  “Hal?” I called out quietly.

  The rustling ceased. No one answered.

  I looked around the yard. No one here but me. Me and the fluttering shadows of potted fuchsias. I felt a chill of apprehension. I tried again, with more authority in my voice. “Who’s there?”

  Then I heard twigs snapping and the sucking sound of footsteps in the mud. They seemed to be coming from the gully.

  There were too damn many people prowling around. I dashed across the lawn to my car.

  I turned the key in the lock and was surprised to find myself latching, rather than unlatching, the door. I knew I hadn’t left the Mercedes open. Not with that gun under my seat.

  I climbed in, feeling under the seat for the revolver. I groped around for a full two minutes, breaking a couple of nails and pinching my fingers in the springs.

  The damned gun had disappeared. Again!

  27

  My aunt stood on the porch offering her cheek to departing guests. I sat in the Mercedes, watching absentmindedly. She kept glancing over her shoulder into the vestibule, apparently looking for someone. My papa, probably. He seemed to be ersatz host of the fête. I wondered vaguely what had become of him. I hadn’t seen him since he’d first greeted me.

  Less vaguely, I wondered who the hell had taken the Buntline Scout out of my car. Sandy knew how to pick locks. And he’d had time to do some burgling while I chatted with Captain Loftus and the high school reunion organizer. But why would he want a twenty-two? He had his own gun.

  I put the car into gear. If Sander Arkelett had the twenty-two, it meant he didn’t want to use his own gun. But use it for what? On whom?

  I laid scratch, pulling away from the curb. I suddenly wanted to be far away, fast. Away from Sandy, away from my vituperative aunt, away from the folksily perspicacious captain, and most of all, away from my cavalier cousin.

  The note I’d left Hal at the motel … it must have occurred to him when he read it—when I didn’t come back—that I’d run into Sandy outside. And though Hal had gone to some trouble to make me distrust Sandy, he hadn’t bothered to phone me to satisfy himself I’d escaped the encounter unscathed.

  Besides which, we’d spent a hell of a terrific night together. And not so much as a “Thank you, ma’am.”

  I squealed around the nearest corner, down a long stretch of side street flanking the gully beside my aunt’s house. I was starting to floor it when my headlights slid over a car parked in a curbside river of rainwater. Sandy’s Mustang.

  It was the only car around. The street had gully on either side—no houses, no street lamps. Just one black car.

  I pulled up alongside it. Shifted into park and climbed out of the Mercedes. Peered into the Mustang’s dark interior.

  If Sandy had taken the twenty-two, chances were he’d stashed it in this rented car. The damn gun was two feet long, not easily tucked into a cummerbund.

  I hesitated, hand on the driver’s door. Sandy had once shown me how to slip a wire under a car window and pull up the lock. I knew I had a coat hanger in the Mercedes. The question was whether I wanted to find the revolver—and what the hell I’d do with it if I did find it.

  I’d keep it away from Sandy. I could do that much.

  I was getting the hanger out of my trunk when I heard shots. Two of them, less than a second apart, no louder than firecrackers but deeper in pitch. They came from the gully or from my aunt’s rhododendrons beyond it.

  A sudden blast of wind brought up the decayed smell of skunk cabbage. I stood there for a minute, coat hanger dangling from my fingers. Wind flayed my face, my skirt flapped, goose bumps rose on my arms and legs. I tried to believe I’d heard cars backfiring. Cherry bombs. I dropped the hanger and climbed back into the Mercedes.

  I made myself turn around and go back to my aunt’s house. My high heels wouldn’t get me through the oozing mud of the gully, but I could check the rhododendron bushes.

  I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was harboring the morbid fear that Sander Arkelett had just shot my cousin.

  What I found was equally distressing.

  Light from my aunt’s deck and side yard filtered through the thick hedge, faintly illuminating the shadowy, storm-tossed tangle of vegetation beyond. On the margin of relatively dry ground between the rhododendrons and the sloping gully, I found Sandy Arkelett.

  He was slumped against a redwood tree. One leg was buckled beneath him and the other extended straight out in front. Pale light glinted in his hair, and I could see that his head lolled. A white spot against the black of his suit jacket appeared to be his own hand, clamped over his heart. And, dark against the grayed whiteness of his shirt, a stain spread upward toward his collar.

  I felt my high heels sink into the soft dirt. My knees sank, too. I felt cold, leaf-strewn mud on my legs. I felt my fingers knot themselves into my hair, and I heard myself make a sound. Not a moan, not a scream; somewhere in between.

  Almost immediately, Emmanuel Loftus was crouched beside me, pressing my face to his chest, shouting to somebody. His voice rumbled unintelligibly behind the crisp warmth of his shirt.

  And I never got a chance to go to Sandy. Two plainclothes cops beat through the bushes, swearing and snapping branches, and the captain turned me over to one of them, ordering, “Get her inside! And keep everyone away from her. And for pity’s sake, warm her up.�
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  As one of the policeman dragged me, almost literally dragged me, away, I managed a backward glance at Sandy.

  The captain and the other officer knelt over him, pulling his hand away from his chest.

  28

  I slumped on my father’s bed. The plainclothesman who’d searched my house the evening before threw a bedspread around my shoulders. I shrugged it off.

  Sandy shot. Did it mean I’d been right to suspect him of god knows what? Or did it prove him innocent?

  Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe all that mattered was that I’d made love to him (if not loved him) for most of a long, bitter winter. And now he might be dying. Might be dead.

  I was too shocked to cry. I heard my father pounding on his bedroom door, asking what was the matter. The cop said, “Sorry, sir, police business. I can’t let you see Miss Di Palma until the captain says so.” My aunt responded with an outraged, “This is my house, you know!”

  Who could have shot Sandy? Why?

  Why specifically, I didn’t know. But I knew it must involve my plan to hurt Gary Gleason, to hurt him the way he’d hurt me.

  And I realized with sickening clarity that it was me— my own pain—I’d wanted to avenge; not Lennart’s death, not really. Hal was right. I hadn’t loved Lennart Strindberg. I had merely saved face by thinking so.

  My god, what kind of scheme had I set in motion, that people should end up—

  “Is he dead?” I asked the plainclothesman for the twentieth time.

  The man fidgeted with something in his pocket, peering out my father’s bedroom window at the redwood deck below. “I didn’t get a good look,” he repeated.

  It was about an hour before Captain Loftus tapped at the door. I heard his pleasant Oklahoma drawl as he assured my father, “You can see her in just a minute, Mr. Di Palma. I’ll have Dick fetch you when we’re done.”

  Then he slipped through the door, shutting it tight behind him. His navy blue suit was streaked with mud, a bit of crumbled leaf adhered to his hair, and he rubbed his hand with a linen handkerchief.

  “Shot twice in the chest,” he said immediately. “But it could’ve been worse. Paramedics don’t think it touched the heart. Probably some damage to the lungs. Too early to say.” He squatted beside the bed, squinting sympathetically.

  “He’s not dead?”

  “No. Definitely not dead.” The captain put his arms around me and I broke down.

  I heard the plainclothes cop shuffle nervously around the room, and I pulled myself together. “Did he say anything? Did he say who shot him?”

  The captain murmured, “Talked a little. Which is a good sign. He’s not choking—good sign for the lungs.”

  I gripped Loftus’s lapels. “What did he say?”

  “That it was too dark to see who shot him.”

  “Did you see anyone out there?”

  He shook his head. “But we’re still looking. We’ll find something, don’t worry. You should try and get a little sleep, maybe.”

  “Sleep! My God! I’ve got to get over to the hospital.”

  “I thought you might feel that way. Dick, take her over to County, will you?” He gave me a gentle shake. “I wouldn’t want to see you driving tonight, Miss Di Palma.”

  It occurred to me, riding in Dick’s unmarked car, that Captain Loftus hadn’t asked me why I’d been out in the bushes soon after (and for all he knew, at the very moment) Sandy was shot.

  I wondered why he hadn’t.

  29

  Sandy was in surgery when I got to the hospital. Five hours later, the nurse on duty told me they’d “closed him up” and taken him to intensive care. She said only immediate family was allowed in.

  I spent the night on a padded bench in the hall. My papa came to the hospital to try to talk me into coming home. He sat with me for a while, but it made me uncomfortable having him there. I finally asked him to leave. I wanted to ask if he knew where Hal was. But I didn’t. I was afraid he’d say police headquarters.

  I was shambling back and forth along the corridor when the administrative nurse, the one whose name I’d seen on a door the day before, came looking for me. She brought me a cup of coffee and said how nice to see me again after so many years. She said the doctors had removed two bullets from Sandy’s chest. Neither bullet had touched his heart, and if he didn’t develop pneumonia or a lung infection, he should pull through. The nurse, grown very stout over the years, seemed shocked when I inquired what caliber the bullets were. She said she didn’t know. When I asked her to find out, she said maybe she’d better check with the police first.

  Captain Loftus found me crumpling a Styrofoam cup.

  “Captain!” I tossed the cup away. “What did you find? Do you know who shot him?”

  He shook his head ruefully, sinking onto the bench beside me. His pants legs—he still wore the navy blue suit—were caked with mud, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “Didn’t find much out there, I’m afraid. Pity your friend didn’t see anything. I don’t suppose you saw anything?”

  “I wondered when you’d get around to asking.”

  There was a glint of irritation in his eyes.

  I added hastily, “I assumed you had your reasons for waiting.”

  “I was curious what you were doing out there, of course. But I knew you weren’t going anywhere.” He frowned at his ruined shoes. “And I knew you’d have told me right away, anything that might have assisted our search.”

  Sensible, if unusually civil for a cop. “What caliber bullet—”

  “Lab’s got ‘em. We’ll know more in a while.”

  “But you must know what caliber—”

  “What took you out to those bushes, Miss Di Palma?”

  I considered asking about the bullets again. But I realized Loftus didn’t mean to answer. “I’d just left my aunt’s party, just turned the corner onto Clegg Street when I heard the shots. I turned around and went back. To take a look.”

  The captain raised his grizzled brows and blinked at me a few times. “Now that took some guts. With somebody out there shooting off a gun.”

  “Guts? I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking. I was just afraid it might be … someone I cared about.”

  “Intuition? Well, you were certainly right.”

  “Yes.” I saw no point in telling him it was Hal I’d been worried about, Sandy I’d mistrusted. “Practically the first thing I saw was Sandy. And then—”

  “And then I found you.”

  “You heard the shots too?”

  “Yuh. Went out and scouted around. Heard somebody in that bit of ravine, right before I come upon you.” He rose wearily, stretching a little. With his suit jacket unbuttoned, I could see something dark under his arm. A shoulder holster. “I’ll be by again in a while, Miss Di Palma. You think it over. Maybe something’ll come back to you.”

  I watched him walk down the hall. San Francisco Homicide would have stuck me in a tiny room with soundproofed cork walls. One, maybe two teams of inspectors would have asked me for every detail: When exactly did I hear the shots? What did they sound like? What was I doing at the time? Why did I think someone had been shot? Why did I risk going back? Why didn’t I call the cops? How long did it take me to get back? How long was I in the shrubbery? What exactly did I see and hear? Did Sandy speak to me? Had we been quarreling? Were we lovers?

  I remembered the adage about the devil you know.

  30

  That evening, two nurses wheeled Sandy into Gary Gleason’s old room. Gary, I learned, had checked out right after my visit. I sneaked in behind the nurses, watching them position the bed, plugging monitors into bits of plastic taped to Sandy’s neck and abdomen. Sandy was newsprint white, in a drooling narcotic sleep, with tubes running into his nose and out from under the sheet on his chest. Plastic bags dangled from attachments to the bed, dripping som
ething into his veins. Small, nozzled tanks of oxygen were arranged on his bedside table.

  The nurses shooed me out of the room before I had a chance to get close.

  I was as depressed as I could remember feeling, ever. I trudged to the padded bench, hardly noticing the man in the hall … until he wheeled around and strode rapidly toward the exit. Six feet four, maybe six five, longish white-blond hair, and most of all, the carriage.

  “Lennart!” My gasp sounded a little hysterical.

  The man stopped. His shoulders hunched. He turned around slowly. Reluctantly.

  I blinked several times, expecting him to shimmer out of being right before my eyes. Lennart Strindberg. Unchanged. Lennart at twenty-one.

  He said, “You are Laura Di Palma, are you not?”

  The voice was like a punch in the stomach. I knew it couldn’t be, knew it wasn’t, and yet it looked like Lennart—and talked like him.

  I opened my mouth. Couldn’t speak. Ended up crying.

  The boy’s eyes glazed with tears, his pale cheeks grew pink. He ran a delicate hand through his corn silk hair.

  “You’re Dieter Strindberg. You must be.” I brushed my tears away.

  He nodded. “I am sorry to startle you in this way.” He walked toward me, stopping just short of the padded bench.

  From a distance of five feet, I could see the differences between the brothers. Lennart had been a little shorter, a little heavier. His cheekbones had been more pronounced, his chin stronger.

  Dieter Strindberg said, with a trace of German accent, “I wish very much to see Mr. Arkelett. Is he—? He is not in danger of—?”

  “If he doesn’t get pneumonia, he’ll probably make it.”

  The young man watched a nurse come out of Sandy’s room with an armload of crumpled linen. His shoulders sagged. “I do not know, I am not sure what is the best thing for me to do now.”

  “You were talking to Sandy on the phone day before yesterday. Is he working for you?”

  He nodded. “Yes, for three months now Sander is finding evidence that Lennart did not murder himself.”