Nina and Joe looked at each other. Joe’s hands, so steady in the emergency, now shook like leaves in a gust of wind. "That was a close one," he said. "Are you sure you should—"
"Get going!" Sarah shouted.
The physician’s answering service located Dr. Lee at the hospital. After quizzing Nina briefly on why an ambulance had not been called, he promised to arrive in ten minutes. Nina and the gardener sat down on a couch made of enormous pieces of burlwood covered with a thick, fluffy sheepskin, staring into the darkness of the fireplace, listening to the silence above. As evening came on, the house had gotten cold, even though September was still a few days away.
"That little girl, she’s got big problems," Joe said eventually. He got up, stuffed papers and logs on the grate, and lit a match from a metal container on the hearth. Then he sat back on the edge of the couch, holding his baseball cap on his knees. He smelled of grass and sweat. "Her and her brother, both."
"She looked so ... I’m amazed she can talk," said Nina.
"I saw it once before. I saw a man who died like that. My cousin killed himself."
"It’s a hard way to die. I’m surprised she didn’t use pills. You saved her life, you know."
He looked shocked, and Nina saw that his hands continued to shake, and his skin had developed a sickly pallor under its warm brown color. He had been as affected, or even more affected, as she had been by the sight of the girl.
"Not me! Her mother was already there. She would have found a way to get her down without me or you."
"Maybe," Nina said.
"Jason and Molly, they’ve been protecting their mother like she was the kid. Now I guess she has to be the grown-up. That’s good, at least."
"What do you mean, protecting?"
"I saw them try many times to stand between their mother and father. He never hit her, he just ran her down all the time, and raised his fist at her—you know—to keep her in line. The kids, they were afraid of him, but they were more afraid for their mother. Jason was starting to stand up to him, becoming a man."
"You know a lot about the family."
"They spend a lot of time outdoors. It’s not like I listen at the window. And Molly talks to me sometimes."
"What about?"
"I don’t know if I should talk to you about this."
"I’m Mrs. de Beers’s attorney," Nina said. "I’m just trying to help."
"She wisecracks," Joe said, "but underneath she’s not laughing. She has all the boys hanging around, but she doesn’t care, she just hangs out with Jason and their friend Kenny. She and Jason are like this...." The fingers on his hands intertwined. "Jason shouldn’t have moved out like he did. She misses him a lot. She goes out on the lawn and sits on the phone with him so her mother can’t hear."
"And what does she say on the phone?"
He looked at her sideways. "How am I supposed to know that?"
"You can’t help overhearing," Nina said. "I mean, you’re out there doing your job just a few feet away. Of course you hear things."
"It’s true. She doesn’t care what she says around me. I’m like that herb garden that’s hidden behind the flowers, useful but they don’t have to see me," he said. "Well, I heard her yesterday talking to her brother. She says she’s tired of telling lies. Then Jason says something, and she says, don’t worry, she’ll keep her promise, but she’s worried and can’t sleep and why doesn’t he come home."
The front door opened with a bang and a stocky Asian-American man with gray hair brushed straight back, holding a doctor’s bag, strode in, Leo Tarrant close on his heels.
"I’m Dr. Lee. Where is she?" he said.
"Top of the stairs, to your right."
"I’m coming up," Tarrant said.
"Oh, no, you’re not," Dr. Lee called, taking the stairs two at a time. "I’ll be down as soon as I can. You just sit tight."
Tarrant turned to Nina and Joe, saying, "I just drove up and saw Dr. Lee getting out of his car. He told me about Molly on the way in. How is she?" He looked frightened.
"I really don’t know," Nina said. "But she was awake and talking when we left the room. She wouldn’t let us call an ambulance."
"May I be excused?" Joe said. "I have to finish the lawn." Tarrant’s entrance had erased him. His intelligent face smoothed out into bland emptiness and he seemed to shrink a little as he slid back into the role of being just the gardener.
"I guess," Nina said. Joe went out and Tarrant walked over to the fireplace, where the logs crackled and burned, propping his arm on the mantel in an easy stance. He wore a tan sport coat and chinos over chukka boots. He had a face like an old boxer’s, flat-nosed and battered, but his eyes were shrewd, and he had a gentle voice. Ugly-handsome, Nina decided.
"Thank God you people went in there in time. Poor Molly," he said, looking toward the top of the staircase. "How close was it?"
"Ask the doctor, Mr. Tarrant. She was talking to her mother, fully conscious. I don’t know. She had a close call."
"What in the world made her do this? The shock of Ray’s death? I don’t believe it. I hate to say it, but she disliked Ray so much, I would have thought she’d..." Tarrant said. "Never mind. She’s going downhill instead. Damn it! Poor little thing." He shook his head in disbelief.
"You came to see Sarah?"
"Yes. I thought she might like to go over to Harrah’s for a bite to eat and a show."
"Do you see each other often?" Nina asked.
"Is that your business?"
"I just like to have a half-wit’s understanding of what’s going on when I take on a client," Nina said. "And I am deeply confused about this whole family."
"Don’t get involved. Do what you’re supposed to do," Tarrant said. "Get Quentin off our butts."
"Explain one thing to me. I’m curious about Quentin’s relationship to his son. I understand you were in partnership with the two of them in De Beers Construction," Nina said.
"Quentin drummed up the business, Ray screwed up the construction, and I cleaned up the mess," Tarrant said. "Quentin had to bring somebody in after Ray almost drove the company into the ground. I’m making the company profitable again, in spite of Ray obstructing me at every turn. I’ll say this for Quentin: He’s a smart enough businessman to keep me as general manager no matter what Ray says—said, I mean.
"Quentin forgave every crummy thing Ray did. He just couldn’t see it. Quentin worked for thirty years to make a good reputation and Ray dragged it in the dirt, but Quentin just made excuses for him. They hunted, fished, gambled together. He took Ray’s death hard. He needs somebody to blame. He missed seeing the body, that’s the whole problem. He’s a concrete thinker. He doesn’t trust anybody else’s opinion. He has to see things with his own eyes."
"Maybe we should just let the old man have a look," Nina said. "If it means that much to him. We could have the police do a civil standby, so he wouldn’t have a chance to—wouldn’t be alone with the body. Sarah doesn’t agree, of course, or we wouldn’t be handling this hearing the way we are...."
She expected Tarrant to flare up at her suggestion, but his expression broke into one she was getting used to instead—the harassed look she had seen on the faces of both Sarah and Molly.
"Listen. This hearing is about much more than Quentin’s fatherly need to see his son’s body. It’s about Quentin controlling Sarah and the kids. Sarah is trying to stand up to him for the first time. Her freedom, and Molly and Jason’s freedom, depend on her breaking that control. She needs you to battle him, not compromise with him. Are you going to take care of the job or not? Or should I tell Sarah she should get a postponement and another lawyer?"
"Oh, I’ll go to battle, Mr. Tarrant. But I won’t go in blind," Nina said. "You and Sarah had better understand that."
Tarrant nodded, saying, "Thanks. I’m sure you’ll do your best." He glanced up toward the landing. "I’m going up there."
Dr. Lee appeared above them, brushing off his sleeves. "She’s fine," he sai
d, talking down the stair-well. "Just a few bruises. She’ll be hoarse for a few days. That kind of rope stretches, so her weight when she stepped off the chair didn’t break her neck. Her mother is staying with her. She said there’s no reason for you to stay at this point."
"She’s not going to the hospital?" Nina said in amazement.
"She’ll be all right here," the doctor said flatly.
"She needs psychiatric help," Nina persisted. "Don’t we have to report this to someone?"
"Excuse me," said the doctor, stepping rapidly down the stairs. "I don’t believe we’ve met."
"I’m Mrs. de Beers’s attorney, Nina Reilly."
"Well, then, Ms. Reilly, you’ll understand why I suggest that you discuss any questions on medical treatment with your client, won’t you?"
"Can I go up now?" Tarrant said.
"You can knock on the door and see," Dr. Lee said. "I’ll let myself out."
Tarrant took to the stairs. "See you at the hearing, Ms. Reilly," he said.
"Please tell Sarah that I will be in touch," Nina said.
From below, Nina heard Tarrant’s rapping and the door opening. The door to the bedroom shut again and the house fell silent except for the snapping of the fire. Outside, she heard Joe’s leaf blower extirpating every wild thing that had had the temerity to fall upon the expensive grass. It was getting dark.
Apparently, the incident with Molly was closed. It seemed wrong that a human being could come so close to losing her life with so little official involvement. Nina had the sense that Molly’s suicide attempt was being buried just as efficiently as Ray had been. She would bet she’d never hear another word about this, unless she brought it up herself.
And then she thought of something else. The declaration she had prepared for Molly to sign, opposing the motion for exhumation, might as well be thrown away. Molly wouldn’t be available to sign it.
Could the declaration have had anything to do with Molly’s attempted suicide? All it did was briefly reiterate her statement to the coroner’s office about her father’s death on the mountain, express the wish that her father not be disinterred, and state that she had not seen the ring on his finger at the open viewing at the mortuary.
Probably the situation—the mother and grandfather fighting about digging up her father, and her father’s death—and maybe those Kurt Cobain memorials—had more to do with causing her despair.
Would de Beers change his mind when he learned about Molly? She thought about that. The county lawyers had told Nina she was free to handle the motion however Sarah wanted, so long as it didn’t end up costing the county any money. In hand, she had the coroner’s declaration, Sarah’s declaration, and a declaration from the cemetery. Tomorrow she would be picking up another declaration from the police department. But to assure a win she needed at least one of the children to oppose the exhumation request in writing.
The papers had to be filed by tomorrow. She had to go ahead. If de Beers changed his mind, fine, but she wasn’t going to jump to any optimistic conclusions.
The clock on the mantel said six o’clock. Time was running out. She needed to find Jason.
Stacks of phone books from San Francisco to Tahoe were piled on the table in the entry. The local Tahoe directory listed a Kenneth Munger. She wrote down the address, pulled the double walnut doors shut tightly behind her, and breathed a sigh of relief as she slid behind the wheel in the pleasant personal chaos of her Bronco. Here, at least, was a mess she understood.
Paul lay on the big hotel bed in his shorts, hands behind his head on the pillow, gazing at the painting that he had propped up against the wall: Kim’s painting of the hit-and-run.
Outside his tenth-floor window, the neon lights of the casinos were starting to flare up as the daylight faded. He had just worked out in the weight room in the basement and sat in the spa with some jolly French golfers who had a few gems to offer about playing the Pebble Beach links. His body felt light and warm, the muscles of his shoulders pleasantly tired.
Ginger Hirabayashi had identified the glass bits as standard for auto headlights, and faxed him the dispersion and reflectivity indexes from Sacramento. The figures were useless without a car with which to make comparisons, but they might someday turn into evidence.
He had spent the afternoon double-checking the three-year-old police work. The local repair shops turned up nothing—all cars that could have been brought in for accident-based repairs checked out clean. The hospital records had listed weeks of accident victims, including patients with accident-consistent injuries, but revealed nothing. The tow-truck companies and junkyards and police departments for miles around had been advised to report cars disposed of over cliffs or in water or for junk—nothing.
The problem was, they lacked a decent description of the vehicle, much less the driver. Kim called herself a colorist and said details weren’t her thing. If only she’d been from the photo-realist school of art, Paul thought sourly. Her painting contained only massive, barely differentiated forms, not much to hang a theory on....
He stared at the two red triangles pushing the light streak he took to be the car, speeding toward its destiny. These triangles and the green streak constituted the only real details in the picture. Kim hadn’t known why she put the triangles into the picture. He had thought perhaps they stood for a nearby sign, but another look at the photographs of the scene and a spin around the parking lot on the way home had left him unconvinced. Maybe they just stood for blood, or maybe she had simply added something red to balance the green....
His eyes closed and he began drifting into a nap, his thoughts gradually giving way to hypnagogic images swirling like sharks in an asphalt sea, only their shiny fins showing above the water—
Waking with a start, he knew what to do next.
Kenny Munger lived in the run-down apartments on Ski Run Boulevard that housed many of Tahoe’s poorest residents. Nina had dealt with the absentee landlord on several previous occasions and even called in the Department of Health on behalf of one young mother without heat or plumbing the previous winter.
She pulled into the full parking lot and pulled out again, hunting for a spot on the street. Squeezing into a too-small space behind a camper, Nina passed quickly through the dimly lit concrete walkways, her eyes scanning doors for number 108. As she dodged cats and toys, passing by the windows of the apartments, the blue light of TVs flickered through the curtains, babies cried, children laughed, and men and women bickered.
At 108, Jason de Beers opened the door. Barefoot, he wore baggy shorts and an ironed cotton T-shirt. His expression was despondent. "What can I do for you?" he said, not moving out of the doorway. "I’m kind of busy."
"You talked to your mother?"
"Yes! You know about Molly?" He held the door open for her to enter. "I’m getting my clothes on to go over there."
"I came into the bedroom right after your mother found her. Molly stayed conscious throughout. The gardener cut her down right away. He had garden clippers in his belt. Dr. Lee says she’ll be all right."
Jason sank down on the couch. "Why’d she do it? What did she say?" When he sat down, the broken springs just let him sink until he was only a few inches above the floor, his big feet planted firmly on the rug.
"Nothing, to me."
"You’re sure she’s not going to—"
"Not tonight, anyway. Your mother’s not going to let her out of her sight."
"I shouldn’t have left them! This isn’t the kind of thing my mom can handle. Where’s my shoes?" he went on as if she weren’t there. He picked up a sneaker and pulled it on, sockless. Even sitting down, he took up most of the room, and Nina wondered how he could sleep in the makeshift bed in the corner.
Again, she was struck by the anomaly of reasonably ordinary-looking parents having two such knockouts for children. She let the silence lengthen while she studied the lines of his face, certain she had seen them before on a statue, the muscles chiseled in smooth marble, sinewy and d
efinite like his.... Both he and Molly had the high forehead and fine features of their mother, and her wavy hair, reproduced in gold.
Jason looked sturdier than his sister, more athletic. Sarah had mentioned some of the sports Jason had been involved in over the years: tennis, swim team, hockey, baseball. And Molly played basketball. The twins were high achievers, even if they weren’t happy. Many driven, compulsive achievers weren’t.
While he fumbled with the other shoe, Nina looked around the neat living room. Against the inner wall, an oversize entertainment center/desk combination spilled out books and wires linked to extensive electronic equipment. Covering most of the surface of the desk, tiny animations turning and jumping on its screen, was a state-of-the-art computer with a hard-disk tower and two plastic holders stuffed with disks. Nina could see the Netscape headers and some text but couldn’t read the monitor from where she stood.
Through the half-open door into the bedroom, she saw a table set up like her chemistry lab table in high school, piled with bundles of rods and tubes and cylindrical forms she couldn’t identify. A book on pyrotechnics lay on the carpet. Her eye fell on the open page, which carried the title Recipe for a Sugar Rocket.
Jason finished putting on his shoes, and moved ahead of her, straightening the comforter on the bed, shutting down the computer and locking the bedroom door before turning to her. She approved of and understood this impulse to order. As he straightened up the outer room, his mind could also order itself
He said, "Thank you for coming over to get me, but I’ll take it from here. And thank you... for helping Molly. I have to go."
Nina hesitated.
Looking at him, she could easily erase the shadow of beard and picture him much younger, maybe Bob’s age. But Bob had never felt, she hoped never would feel, the anguish on this young man’s face. He didn’t need any more trouble. But she was going to have to bring it to him anyway.
Briskly, she said, "I didn’t come to get you. I know you need to go, but wait just a minute. Have you talked to your mother about your grandfather’s lawsuit to exhume your father’s body?"
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