Rainbows was closed for the day, but as we crossed the street, we could see a light inside and the owner watching for us behind the window. Mike showed his ID through the glass, and the man unlocked the door to let us in. And bolted it again after us.
“I’m Dennis,” the man said, switching on more lights. “I was afraid my directions had led you astray.”
“Directions were fine,” Mike said. “Nice of you to come out so late.”
“My pleasure.” He smiled. “You saved me from a rather dull dinner party. It took some persuading to keep them all from tagging along. They made me promise to come back for dessert and give a full report.”
I liked him right away. He was tall and slim, soft-spoken, very intellectual-looking but with a flash of humor in his eyes. The jewelry cases he leaned against were empty for the night.
Mounted on the walls there were enlarged photographs showing wonderfully imaginative pieces, unusual combinations of gemstones and precious metals.
“Is that your work?” I asked.
“Most of it is,” he acknowledged with the quiet pride of a person who knows he is very good at what he does. “How can I help you?”
Mike brought out the opal ring that had been found on Pisces’ body. “Do you recognize this?”
Dennis nodded as he took the ring. “It’s my design. A nice piece for a young person. We made it up in several ways, various stones, different finishes on the metal. I had to rework the prongs to set an opal in it, cast them up higher to protect the stone. Opals are relatively fragile. They can shatter.”
“Do you know who bought the ring?” Mike asked.
“I can’t look it up.”
We followed him into his office at the back of the store. Sketches and jeweler’s tools littered the desk. He pushed aside a box of purple wax sticks and turned on a computer. When he punched in a code name from memory, a short list scrolled on the screen.
“We sold four of this design with opals. I have the names and addresses of three of them.” He looked up at Mike over his wire-rim glasses. “If a customer pays with cash and declines to give a name or address, I don’t push it.”
“I understand,” Mike said, with a just-us-guys grin on his face. “The ring is engraved to Hillary.”
“That helps,” Dennis said.
He opened a drawer of file cards and thumbed through them. Then he wrote a single name and address on a notepad, tore it off, and handed it to Mike.
“For Valentine’s Day this year, Randall Ramsdale bought two rings from me: an opal for his daughter, engraved ‘Hillary’ with a heart, and a two-carat, emerald-cut diamond engraved `Randy Forever.’ He paid with his American Express card.”
“Do you know Randall Ramsdale?” Mike asked.
“Not well. He’s something of a neighborhood character. More money than brains.” He tapped the card and smiled. “But obviously fine taste. I haven’t seen him around for a while. Maybe a couple of months. He was supposed to have gone off to Europe with a waitress from the bar across the street. Something must have happened, though, because she was in here shortly after he bought the ring, trying to sell it back to me.”
“You wouldn’t know her name, would you?” Mike asked. “Oh, sure. Lacy. I see her all the time. She still works over there.”
I asked, “Was the diamond an engagement ring?”
“Maybe a premature one. Randy already has a wife.”
“What about Hillary?” I asked. “What can you tell us about her?”
He frowned as he thought about it. “To be honest, I can’t answer that with any certainty. The Shore is a fairly close-knit community. A lot of kids hang out on Second Street. I don’t have the sort of store they cruise through, but after a while you come to recognize faces. You see the same ones in the ice cream stores, or looking around in The Gap, renting tapes at the Wherehouse. I might recognize Hillary Ramsdale as a familiar face, but I’m sure I couldn’t point out a girl on the street and say that’s her, that’s Hillary.”
Mike took out the Polaroid of Pisces that had been made in the morgue. I stayed his hand before he could turn it over. It didn’t seem right to me that this nice man should be exposed to her dead face. Not that the picture was especially grim: she had been hosed down, and her hair combed back from her face. The slash across her neck looked like no more than a thin black cord. I guess I thought that showing her face in death was an invasion of both her privacy and his peace.
“I can make a better still from the videotape,” I said. “Can’t it wait?”
Mike looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
I said, “Lyle sent the tape. It should be delivered first thing tomorrow. As soon as it comes, I’ll take it over to Guido’s and get some nice full-face prints made.”
“I don’t get you, Maggie,” Mike said. “We’re here now.”
“Please,” I said, looking up into his eyes. That was taking cruel advantage. Every time I looked up into Mike’s eyes his jaw sort of went slack and his cheeks took on a glow.
“I don’t mind taking a look,” Dennis said. In fact, he seemed eager. I backed off and Mike showed him the picture.
Dennis studied the pale, scrubbed face, then shook his head. “Sorry. Maybe with her hair done …”
“We’ll bring you a better picture later,” Mike said, sounding a bit grumpy. And sarcastic. “A nice still made before she got all mussed.”
I patted his arm.
“What about Mrs. Ramsdale?” I asked Dennis. “Hillary’s mother, that is.”
Dennis shook his head. “Again, I’ve seen her around. The Ramsdales are part of the yacht-club set. You might ask over there.”
“Do you know the Metrano family?” Mike asked.
He thought that one over, too.
“Amy Elizabeth Metrano,” I said.
“Ahh.” He nodded. “I haven’t heard that name for a long time. And the answer to your question is no. That I would have remembered.”
“Thanks for your help.” Mike extended his hand to the jeweler. “We may be back.”
“Anytime.” Dennis smiled at me. “Next time, come during business hours so I can show you my work. I’m especially proud of my rings.”
“Bye,” I said. I wouldn’t even look at Mike. I have a good nose for danger zones, and we were fast approaching one. Things had been going so well between us. Why mess it up with the old argument? I walked straight to the door and waited for it to be unlocked.
When we were back outside, Mike caught my arm and turned me to face him. “He mentions rings, you get all panicked. You have a phobia maybe? Ringaphobia? How about bellsaphobia?”
“How about shut up?” I said.
“I like this.” He grinned. “It’s like finding a new tickle spot.”
I glared at him. “Are we going to try to talk to this Lacy person now?”
“Yeah. You going to let me show her the picture?”
“Of course. I’m sorry about that, Mike. What can I say?”
“Forget it.”
We elbowed through the crowd on the sidewalk around the sports bar and made our way inside. The bar was dark, noisy, and full of cigarette smoke. A baseball-game replay ran on several large screens, but no one seemed to be paying much attention to it. The clientele was a mix of singles on the make, heavy-duty drinkers, casually dressed couples out for the evening.
“Need a bullhorn to talk to anyone in here,” Mike yelled in my direction. He signaled to a passing waitress, a young, buff blond dressed like a basketball referee.
“What can I get you?” she asked. She had to shout.
Mike showed her his police ID. “Is Lacy working tonight?”
“No, sorry. She called in sick.”
“Know where I can find her?”
“The boss does. Is she in trouble?”
“I don’t know.”
Mike pulled out the morgue Polaroid and handed it to her. She held it up to the light reflecting from the closest TV screen and looked at.
; She looked up at Mike. “It’s Hilly. Is she back? My God, she looks sick.”
“Back from where?” he asked.
“Somewhere in Europe, I think. Ask Lacy.”
Mike put the picture back into his pocket. “Hilly is Hillary Ramsdale?”
“Yes.” The big smile was gone. “Is Hilly okay? God, she’s such a sweet kid.”
“Where’s the boss?” Mike asked.
She pointed toward the back of the bar.
Mike put his lips close to my ear. “Wait for me. I’ll be right back.”
The waitress stayed with me.
“Where is Hilly?” she asked.
“How well do you know her?” I asked.
“Just through Lacy. Hilly used to drop in sometimes when she needed someone to talk to.”
“You’re close to Lacy?”
She raised a shoulder. “We work together, that’s all. She doesn’t party much.”
“I thought she partied with Randy Ramsdale.”
“I don’t know what was going on with those two. My guess is Lacy likes Hilly a whole lot more than her father. He can be a real dweeb. And he’s old. Forty at least.” She had to be at least twenty-one to serve beer. If I had been a cocktail waitress, I would have carded her. She asked, “Is he back, too?”
“I don’t know. No one answers the phone.”
“Well, if you see Hilly, say hi for me.” She was ready to go back to work. “Tell her to drop in.”
I put my hand on her arm. “Hillary died two days ago.”
“Died?” she gasped. I saw tears in her eyes before she lowered her head and ran off into the crowd.
The smoke and the happy din had become oppressive. I went out into the cool night to wait for Mike. I was standing beside his car, watching for red Corvettes, when he came out five minutes later.
“Did you call Lacy?” I asked.
“No one’s home.” He unlocked the car door for me. “No one seems to know where Ramsdale is, either. I called his ex-wife again and got the machine. I’ll do some checking around, come back later.” He nudged my shoulder. “When I have more socially acceptable photographs, right?”
“So what are we going to do now?” I asked.
“Too late to do anything more tonight. How about we go home?”
I didn’t argue. I sank into the car seat wearily, yawned when he yawned a few times.
Traffic headed north on the San Diego Freeway was heavy and slow, an endless river of taillights in front of us, headlights behind. Mike had a condo in Sherman Oaks, a relic from his second marriage. The decor was a little heavy on black lacquer and gray leather for my taste, but it was nice. I only wished it weren’t so far away. I was having trouble staying awake.
“You’d make a pretty good cop,” Mike said, startling me from a stupor. “Good police do more listening than talking.”
“I keep thinking about those poor people, the Metranos. It just doesn’t seem right. Here are good people, love their kids, do the right things for them, invest their hopes in them. The very worst thing that could happen to them is to have one of their children taken away. Then I think about old Sly. Would anybody even notice if he got snatched? Where’s the justice here? We’re one kid short on one hand, one kid left over on the other. But the equation will not balance.”
“Which cliche do you want, Maggie? Shit happens? Life ain’t fair? Go figure?”
I looked over at him. “So we know Pisces was Hillary Ramsdale. Do you think Hillary could have been Amy Elizabeth Metrano?”
“Anything’s possible. Not likely in this case, but possible.”
“Too bizarre, though. That equation doesn’t seem to work, either.”
“You sound tired,” he said. “You okay?”
“It’s been one hell of a day, hasn’t it?”
“What do you want for dinner?” he asked. He had dark circles under his gray eyes. “We can go out or stop at the market for something to cook. Barbecue some chicken if you like.”
“Whatever you want. I’m not very hungry. It’s too late to eat.”
“We haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
I had been fiddling with the set of handcuffs Mike always had dangling from his turn indicator. They were tarnished, a little rusty at the hinges.
“Things been slow at the office, dear?” I asked. “From the look of these cuffs, you haven’t arrested anyone for a while.”
“I don’t use that set for arresting people,” he said, playful malice shining from his narrowed eyes. “You like to play with handcuffs?”
I laughed. “I wouldn’t know.”
“You really need two sets to do it right, though. I think I have some more in the trunk.”
“Keep them there.”
“You might like it, Maggie. Cuff you to the bedpost tonight, I could have my way with you all night long. Make you scream in ecstasy fifty times in a row. If I wanted to.”
“You don’t need cuffs for that, cupcake.” I was laughing, though I wasn’t quite sure whether he was serious. All right, so I didn’t have him completely figured out yet, either.
“Think about it,” he said.
“Right.”
Mike winked lewdly at me and flicked the handcuffs to set them swinging. “So? What’ll it be?”
I took the handcuffs off the turn indicator, opened them, and snapped one over Mike’s right wrist.
“Real funny,” he said, nonplussed. The empty cuff dangled from his wrist.
“Hope you have the key,” I said, and locked the second cuff around the steering wheel. “Now you’re trapped. I can do anything I want with you.”
“Jesus, Maggie,” he laughed, but he was nervous, pulling against the chain. “Get them off me. The key is on the ring in my right pocket.”
“The key ring’s in your pocket?”
He stretched up from the seat so I could get my hand into his pocket. I put my hand into his pocket all right, but I didn’t bother with the key ring.
My hand was cold and his pocket was deliciously warm, so I just felt around inside there. Rubbed his flat tummy, reached all the way down to the pocket’s bottom seam, squeezed his thigh, worked my way down into his groin.
“Maggie,” he said, rattling the cuff against the wheel. “Knock it off. Unlock these damn things.”
“Hell, no. I’m having fun.” I stroked him through the fabric, felt him rise under my hand. “And so are you.”
“I am not. Now stop.”
“Your lips say no, no, no, but your hard-on says yes, yes, yes.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “You’re going to make me hit something.”
“Then pull over.” I took my hand out of his pocket and started to work on his belt. I opened his fly. Up to that point, I had only been teasing. The fun was all in making him wonder — okay, worry — about how far I would go. Keep him off guard. As soon as I touched his bare skin, the game changed.
“Oh, for God’s sake, baby,” he said, feigning shock when my fingertip grazed him. But he tilted his hips forward and helped clear his belt away with his free hand so that I could get to him more easily. He caught my hand for just an instant. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to make you scream with ecstasy fifty times in a row.” My hand was inside his shorts. I ran two fingers down his smooth, firm length, circled his balls, started up again. His breath was coming in deep, regular sighs.
A greaseball astride a Harley roared up beside us on Mike’s side, looked in, figured out what was going on, gave me a grin and a raised-fist salute, then roared off screaming “Yeeha,” or something close to it.
“People are watching,” Mike said.
“Let them.” I cuddled up against him, kissed the side of his neck, ran my tongue around the rim of his ear while my hand stroked him. With my lips against his five-o’clock shadow, I said, “What do you want me to do?”
He shrugged, smiled shyly. “I swear, you’ll make me run into something.”
“Just give me w
arning when you see it coming,” I said.
“I promise,” he said, and sighed again.
I opened his suit pants as far as I could, and went down on him. He was a very sweet man, lovely to behold. I took as much of him into my mouth as I could. I licked him, sucked on him, worried about bumps in the road, but gently bit him anyway. Never in my life had I imagined doing such a thing on the freeway, in traffic — cars zipping by on either side. Just thinking about where we were added a certain dimension to the pleasure. Weird, maybe. An antidote for fatigue, absolutely.
I couldn’t see Mike’s face, but I could hear him. And I could feel the car’s movement. I think we made a couple of unplanned lane changes, accompanied by irate horn honking. The horns lent appropriate background for Mike’s version of “Yeeha.” Then we rolled over a lot of lane-divider turtles, swerved sharply right, and the car began to slow.
“Maggie,” Mike moaned hoarsely. He grabbed my collar and tugged me up. I thought he was just being fastidious. But when I raised my head I found we were on an off ramp, on a direct collision course with the stop sign at the bottom. When the front bumper met the stop-sign post we were hardly moving. Still, there was a bump.
I looked up at Mike’s face. His teeth were clenched, but he was smiling. I started to laugh.
Mike began to tuck himself in one-handed. I reached into his pocket, found his key ring, and unlocked his handcuff. “What do you think?” I asked.
“It’s a good way to die.” He wrapped me in his arms and gave me a lovely long, deep kiss. When he finally looked up again, he said, “Do you have any idea where we are?”
“Not a clue,” I said, as he bumped down off the curb and accelerated into traffic.
CHAPTER 7
Sunday morning, the doorbell rang while Mike was in the shower. I pulled on one of the sweatshirts from the assortment of clothes littering his floor and answered the door.
A courier handed me a large package addressed to Mike in Lyle’s extravagant scrawl. I forged Mike’s name on the delivery register, shut the door, and opened the package as I walked toward the kitchen. Inside the box I found the videotape we needed. Lyle had also tucked in my vitamins and a dozen of his homemade bran muffins. He is such a fuss.
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