Red Means Run

by Brad Smith

  She thought about her conversation with Suzanne in the car. It was probably going to be an interesting day at the Boddington house. Suzanne’s blood was up, and she wasn’t the type to let things slide. Despite her laid-back demeanor, she was actually very good at confrontation, but only when she felt cornered. Jane had known for a long time that Suzanne regarded her marriage to Miller as a trade-off. Jane also knew that there were things Suzanne would not trade.

  After a while she went inside and checked her messages. There were fifty-seven in total, most from friends offering condolences, shoulders to cry on, food and wine, tea and sympathy. One from a local casket maker, offering a rock-bottom price. Several calls from various media outlets looking for comments or begging for interviews. How they got the number was a mystery; it was unlisted but that didn’t seem to matter anymore. Jane had it changed three or four times during the trial but still they got through. There were two messages from Edie Bryant, one to say she was thinking of Jane, and the second asking Jane to call back. Jane wondered what that was about.

  And there was a message, finally, from Gracie. She’d heard the news, of course; she would have had to be living in a cave not to have heard. As it turned out, she nearly had been. Or a tent, at least. Her message said she had been camping in New Mexico with Andre. It was the first Jane had heard of Andre. Gracie had asked Jane to call her back. She made a cup of espresso before dialing the number.

  “Hey, it’s Jane,” she said when Gracie picked up.

  “Oh, hi,” Gracie’s voice was hoarse, thick with sleep.

  Jane looked at the clock and realized it was twenty after nine in Arizona. Much too early for Gracie to be up and about.

  “I got your message,” Jane said. “So you were camping. I wondered.”

  “Yeah. Andre is a rock climber. So we went to this place north of Santa Fe. Awesome spot. The light there is amazing.”

  “And Andre is . . . ?”

  “He’s my boyfriend.” Gracie’s tone suggested that Jane should know this, even though they hadn’t spoken in over a year. “Andre is a world-class sculptor.”

  Gracie was inordinately enamored of terms like “world-class,” just as she was always enamored of somebody or something new: graphic writers, independent filmmakers, visual artists, heirloom tomatoes, Oregon ice wine. She had turned forty earlier that year and was still skipping through life as if it were a schoolyard playground. Of course, the trust fund helped.

  “So what’s going on there?” she asked. “Have they caught the guy?”

  “No.”

  Gracie was silent for a bit, as if expecting Jane to carry the conversation. “So he killed that lawyer and then he just showed up and . . . and he shot my father?”

  “That’s the way it looks.”

  “Freaky.”

  Yeah, freaky, Jane thought.

  “It said on the news there wouldn’t be a service. My father didn’t want one?”

  “No. He’s been cremated. We’ll have to decide what to do with the ashes at some point down the road.”

  Jane could hear Gracie moving around, and then she heard the flare of a match. Lighting a cigarette.

  “Do you need me to come there, Jane?”

  “Well . . . no. I guess not.”

  “Because, like, this thing with Andre is kinda new and for me to take off now . . . well . . . and I got my work too. I’m working on some new pieces. Still lifes. So if there’s nothing I can do to help out right now, it’s probably better that I stay here. Keep my nose to the grindstone, you know?”

  “I understand completely. Were you working when I called?”

  “Yeah,” Gracie said quickly. “As far as the rest goes, um, I guess everything stays the same? You know, until it all gets sorted out?”

  “Do you mean your monthly check?”

  “Well . . . yeah.”

  “I’ll make sure you get it,” Jane said.

  “Thanks, Jane. That’s cool. Because I’m kind of in a groove right now. I want to get this done and start selling some pieces. You know, get it out there.”

  “Sure.”

  “And then . . . like, I can make it up there for the reading of the will and all that,” Gracie said. “But you probably don’t know when that will be yet?”

  “Alan never had a will,” Jane said.

  “Really?” Jane heard her inhale sharply on the cigarette.

  “Then . . . how does that work?”

  “Basically everything stays the same, like you said,” Jane said.

  “Oh.” Gracie’s voice dropped like she swallowed a piece of lead. “Well, I should get back to work.”

  You mean you should get off the phone with me and start calling lawyers, Jane thought.

  “This is so sad,” Gracie said and hung up.

  Jane wasn’t sure what she was referring to as being so sad, but she could make a pretty accurate guess. She walked outside to see what the dogs were up to as she dialed Edie Bryant’s number.

  “Hi, Edie, it’s Jane.”

  “Oh, Jane, I’m so glad you called. I’m just in the car heading to the airport. How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay. I’ve been at a friend’s house for a couple days and I just got your message.”

  “It wasn’t important. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Day by day. You know.”

  “Such a terrible thing. I know it’s a rotten cliché, but the only thing that can heal a tragedy is time. But there is something to be said about keeping yourself busy. So listen—you can absolutely say no to this, given the timing, but there’s a fund-raiser in Washington at the end of the month I’d love for you to attend. A lot of people you know, but more importantly quite a number you haven’t met yet. It would be good for you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jane said. “I actually thought that maybe you would want to rethink this, after what has happened. Politicians and baggage, and all that.”

  “No, no. I’m not thinking anything of the kind. This isn’t the time to talk about this, not after what you’ve been through. But we will talk. Not to be crass, but something like this can work in your favor. To show your strength, your resilience. You didn’t do anything wrong here, Jane.”

  Jane watched the dogs chase a black squirrel through the trees. “Okay. We can at least talk about it later. And I’ll think about the fund-raiser.”

  “Good. I have to run. But call me if there’s anything at all. I mean that. We have to keep this conversation going.”

  Jane pressed the end button and set the phone on the railing of the deck. The dogs had treed the squirrel just off the edge of the path and were going crazy, circling the big maple, first one way and then the other. The squirrel kept on the move, jumping from branch to branch, one side of the tree to the other, trying to keep out of sight of its pursuers. A couple years earlier the dogs had trapped another squirrel in an identical situation. The squirrel eventually got dizzy from circling the tree and fell to the ground, virtually at the feet of the animals, who were so surprised by the turn of events that they stood there, looking at the squirrel as if it had arrived from another planet. The squirrel jumped up and escaped into the evergreens.

  Jane had always thought there was a parable in there somewhere but had never decided what it was. She went inside and changed her clothes and took the dogs for a run.

  Claire was sitting at her desk, playing a game in her head in which she was a hound and Virgil Cain was a fox, when she looked up to see Alex Daniels approaching. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen a district attorney at the station.

  “Mr. Daniels,” she said. “What, is it my birthday?”

  Daniels sat across from her. “What are you working on?”

  “Virgil Cain.”

  “The Canucks can’t find that guy?”

  “You know what my grandmother used to tell me when I couldn’t find something?” Claire asked.

  “What?”

  “That I was looking in the wro
ng place.”

  “Did you tell the Mounties that?”

  “They’ll figure it out. What’s up?”

  “You ready for court in the morning?”

  Claire leaned forward to pick up her desk calendar. “I don’t have anything for tomorrow. Well, Miller Boddington, but you know that’s going to be a push, with Mickey Dupree out of the picture. Boddington won’t even be there; he’ll send one of his minions. And if he’s not showing up, neither am I.”

  “He’s going to be there,” Daniels said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. There’s something going on.” Daniels shook his head.

  “Apparently Boddington’s brand-new lawyer intends to file a motion tomorrow, and he wants to make sure our side is present and accounted for.”

  “What kind of motion?”

  “He’s not saying. He’s giving us notice that he’s filing just to ensure that we’re there, ready for whatever he’s going to throw at us. He doesn’t want to give us the opportunity to say we weren’t prepared because we assumed we were looking at a remand as a result of the Dupree thing.”

  “But we have no idea what the motion’s going to be,” Claire said. “Change of venue?”

  “I can’t see it,” Daniels said. “Why now?”

  “Who’s the new lawyer?”

  “Guy named Rafael de Costa, from San Francisco.”

  “You check him out?”

  “Googled him. He’s basically a real estate lawyer. High-end real estate—Napa Valley, for the most part.”

  “Isn’t Boddington rumored to be getting into the wine business?” Claire asked.

  “It’s not a rumor anymore,” Daniels told her. “He bought two wineries last week, also according to Google. What they call boutique wineries. Very small. Paid five mil for one and three for the other.”

  “Chump change,” Claire said. She sat thinking about it.

  “Why would he bring a real estate lawyer from California to a criminal trial in New York? That doesn’t make any sense. Judge Harrison just might take this the wrong way. You know what he’s like.”

  “He won’t be there.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s in the hospital. Emergency triple bypass.”

  Claire put the calendar back. She liked the old Scot. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “It looks pretty good, from what I hear.”

  “So who’s presiding?”

  “Somebody from the city. Judge Santiago.”

  “You know him?”

  “No.”

  “Better hope he’s not a wine lover.”

  “I suppose,” Daniels said. “I really don’t think there’s anything to this. But we have to be on our game. Which means you need to prepare to be called, in case this guy wants to challenge anything in evidence, or matters of procedure. Which also means you’re going to have to cancel any social engagements you have planned for this evening. So you can cram.”

  “What’s a social engagement?” Claire asked.

  “There you go,” Daniels said. “Now you have something to do.”

  “I had something to do.”

  “What?”

  “Oh,” Claire said, putting her calendar back. “I was thinking about staking out a farmhouse.”

  “Grow op?”

  “Not exactly.” She looked at him, telling him that’s all she could offer for the moment.

  “Take your files with you,” he said. “For when you get bored.”

  “That won’t work,” Claire told him. “I’ll give it a pass for a night. I don’t think the situation is going to change all that much in twenty-four hours.”

  Daniels got to his feet. “See you in court.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Late in the morning, rain began coming down in torrents. It was midafternoon when Virgil drove the Dodge pickup out of the brush and onto the side road and then east to the thruway. From there he headed south. All he knew about the location of the golf course was that it was somewhere near the town of Middletown.

  He buckled his seat belt and kept to the speed limit. He didn’t litter or cut anybody off in traffic or flip anyone the bird. There was no reason for anybody to be suspicious of a pickup truck with a local veterinary clinic’s logo on the door, and Virgil wanted to keep it that way.

  In Middletown he bought gas at a self-serve station and when he went inside to pay he asked the woman behind the counter for directions to the golf course.

  “Which one? There’s two close by.”

  Virgil couldn’t remember the name of the course. He thought it had a tree in it.

  “There’s Whisky Links,” the woman said. “It’s just down the road. My husband plays there. And there’s Burr Oak, over toward the river.”

  “Burr Oak,” Virgil said, remembering.

  “That’s where all the doctors play,” the woman said and she gave him directions.

  Virgil took the highway out of Middletown, heading back east, and then turned left at a secondary road the woman had described. Ten minutes later, he came upon Burr Oak Golf and Country Club. The place would have been impossible to miss. It rose up out of the forest on Virgil’s left like an English estate, with wrought-iron fencing surrounding the property and stone pillars marking the entrances.

  The course was immaculately landscaped and the grass looked as if it had been cut with a scalpel. The surrounding countryside was relatively flat, but the course had long ago been bulldozed into rounded hills and long-running slopes. There were stands of birch trees and Norwegian spruce strategically planted here and there, and a fast-running stream, swollen by the rain, cutting across the layout. The fairways were lush and seemingly without a single weed.

  All in all, it looked to Virgil like a waste of good farmland.

  He drove half a mile before coming to the main gate, where he pulled into the entranceway and stopped. Sitting back several hundred yards was a massive fieldstone clubhouse, flanked by a pro shop on one side and utility buildings on the other. Due to the weather there were only a dozen or so cars in the large parking lot—mostly Mercedes-Benzes, Porsches, Cadillacs, and the odd Lexus. No clunkers and not a single Dodge pickup with a vet clinic logo on the door.

  Virgil sat there for a time, looking at the place through the intermittent passes of the windshield wipers. Then he backed out and continued down the road. A couple miles along he came to an intersection and turned left. Heading west now, with the golf course hidden somewhere beyond the forest to his left, he came to a stone bridge, which spanned a narrow creek. He saw a sign that read coopers falls park and the beginning of a fence that ran the perimeter of the park. The fencing was about six feet high and built of redwood, or at least of wood stained to look like redwood. Virgil wondered if the park actually butted up against the back of the golf course.

  Soon he came to another side road, this one running only to the left and marked by a large sign advertising the park entrance, with an arrow. Virgil turned and drove for several minutes before reaching the front gate. He pulled over and stopped. The park itself appeared to be huge, and there were signs advertising cabins, campgrounds, fishing, miniature golf, and horseback riding. The entrance road was cut through forest, what appeared to be virgin hardwood, with paved trails winding through the bush. As Virgil watched, a middle-aged couple jogged into view along one of the paths, a small white dog on a leash at their heels. They were wearing rain gear, hoods and nylon pants, and jogged with their heads down, following the trail where it ran close to the fence along the road and then curved back into the park.

  Virgil drove into the park entrance and when he pulled up to the gatehouse, a young woman came out carrying a clipboard. She wore khaki shorts and a yellow T-shirt and was pulling on a windbreaker as she stepped out to meet him.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “I thought I would go for a hike.”

  “In the rain?”

  “I’m a die-hard. My only day off.”

  The girl shrugged. “Day pass
?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Eight dollars.”

  Virgil gave her a ten, and she went inside to get his change. Coming back outside, she took a moment to write down the license plate number from the Dodge. Then she walked over and handed Virgil two singles and the pass. She looked into the cab.

  “You got rain gear?”

  Virgil smiled. “Like I said. Old school.”

  “Have a nice hike,” she said. She smiled at him as if he were an old geezer in a diner with soup on his chin.

  Virgil followed the paved road into the grounds until he came to a parking lot beside a large pavilion with an imitation log cabin exterior. The pavilion served as a hub from which the paved trails ran in virtually every direction. Virgil parked in the lot and took the first path, heading toward the south—and the golf course.

  He walked through the thick bush for maybe a mile, the trail twisting east and then back to the south. There were cabins nestled in the woods here and there, as well as areas designated for tents only. He saw several vehicles but few people, as everyone was presumably staying in out of the rain. Presently he came upon an opening in the trees and wood fencing that marked the boundary of the park. He found a stump to stand on and looked over the top rail. There was a ravine in front of him, and on the far side, about a quarter mile away, was the wrought-iron fence that bordered the back of the golf course.

  Virgil glanced around him, but there was nobody in sight. He pulled himself up and over the fence, dropping onto the wet grass on the far side before starting down into the ravine. The creek he’d crossed earlier in the truck ran through the gully, and he waded across the shallow expanse, soaking himself to his knees. He climbed the far side of the ravine and approached the golf course. There were a number of golf balls in the long grass on the slope, as well as some beer cans, wine cooler bottles, and other trash. He stopped at the fence and found himself standing a short distance from a large, two-tiered green. The flag had a number five on it.

  He heard the sound of an approaching cart and of men talking. He stepped back from the fence and crouched down by a scrub oak and waited. Apparently he wasn’t the only one out in the rain. After a few moments he heard a ball hit the ground and looked to see it rolling onto the green. Another ball arrived shortly, this one missing the green and stopping in the longer grass alongside. Two men arrived in the cart and hurried up onto the green and putted out, running with their heads pulled down into their windbreakers like they were turtles, as if that would keep them dry. Then they were back in the cart and gone.