A Grave Talent (9 page)

She looked down at her feet, which were covered with a pair of relatively soft, low-heeled leather shoes, chosen that morning for walking in the wet hills.

"Sure I could run in them. I wouldn't want to do a marathon, but--"

"How far could you go?"

"Well, I'd hate to go more than ten miles."

"Will they slow you down much?"

"After the first five, yes."

"That's all right, then; it's only four to Tyler's."

"You want me to run to Tyler's Barn?"

"For Christ's sake, Martinelli, wake up. You heard her; she was seen at one and at some time before six. We have to know if she could have made it on foot to Tyler's to pick up a car, driven by car to the Donaldson house in Palo Alto, snatched Samantha Donaldson between three and three-fifteen, and made it back here to see Dodson by six."

"Leaving the body in the car, or carrying it with her?" Hawkin's shriveling look went a long way to explain his ferocious reputation among his colleagues. Kate felt three feet tall.

"In broad daylight?"

"Good," she said gamely. "It saves me from having to carry forty pounds back up the hill with me. Where will I find you?"

"Probably at Tyler's. I'll cheer for you as you go past."

"Thanks. You can buy me a pizza afterwards, to replace the calories."

"And a big glass of goat's milk."

"Come to think of it, I'm busy tonight, very busy. Here, take my jacket and stick it in the truck, would you? I'll drop it in the mud if I try to carry it. And the shoulder holster too, it'll kill me to run in it." She took off the restricting leather harness, retrieved her gun. "I'll take this in my bag. You going to talk to the Dodsons?"

"First on my list. Also, I'll get Trujillo started on the cars, see if we can find who was up here that day, have a chat with Mr. Tommy Chester and maybe another talk with Tyler."

"Have fun." Casey slung the shoulder strap of her heavy bag across her chest, aware that it made her look like an advertisement for bras, and did a few leg stretches before setting the chronometer on her Christmas watch (alarm clock, the time in London, Sydney, and New Delhi, and an unreadable face, just like Dick Tracy), and then set off carefully down the rough and slippery track.

In the house on the hill Vaun Adams heard the old fire wagon cough into life and lumber off. In another minute or two she moved at last. She opened her eyes, took her hand away from her mouth, scrubbed the palms of her hands slowly up and down her trouser legs, and finally stood up, deliberately, as if her body ached all over. Inevitably, she moved to the two easels, touched the smooth handle of a squirrel-hair brush lightly in a gesture of taking bearings, and stood before the nearly finished figure of the agonized mother. The artist's face was without expression, but the tendons in her neck seemed exaggerated, and when her right hand reached out automatically to mix the drying paints on the glass slab, the fingers were unsteady against the handle of the palette knife. She drew back her hand and held it up in front of her face, fingers spread and still trembling. Her eyes studied the hand curiously, examining in minute detail the back of it, then the palm and the softness of the wrist, then the back of it again, the webs, the knuckles, before they looked through the fingers and focused on the painting behind. The hand dropped and as of its own volition, without the eyes looking down, reached out for the tube of cadmium red. She flicked off the cap with her thumb and squeezed a huge dollop out on top of a blue that had taken her half an hour to mix. She dropped the tube and, still without looking, seized a random brush, a large one, and scooped up the blood-colored pigment. She carried it to the face in front of her and stopped, holding it a fraction of an inch from the canvas. Her hand was rock steady now, but the sound of her breathing was suddenly harsh in the room. Thirty seconds, a minute, and abruptly she straightened and put the brush down onto the palette. She scrubbed her palms again down the front of her thighs and glanced at the table next to her, grimaced at the pool of red, and set about carefully to rescue what she could of the laboriously achieved blue tint.

When her face came up again it had changed. Her eyes went to the unfinished woman, and her hand, no longer disconnected but as a part of her, went again to the bundle of brushes and chose one. She rubbed the white bristles into the edge of one of the globules of paint, rose up onto her toes, and reached out for the painting.

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Al Hawkin stood watching until Casey Martinelli's nice firm backside disappeared behind some trees, and then he turned to the wide spot up the Road where Detweiler waited in the muddy wagon. Thank God she's not my type, he thought--no strains there on Hawkin's Rules of Order, Law One: Thou shall not get involved with a female colleague. Two, no, three years ago in Los Angeles he'd been assigned a lady whose long legs and blond curls had been painfully distracting to work next to. He'd finally gone to the man in charge, and a few weeks later, when she was transferred with a promotion, he was freed from Law One and had found her distractions a source of pleasure rather than discomfort. This one, though, would be no problem--no chemistry. Too short, too dark, too well muscled. Wonder if she lifts weights? He climbed up into the car.

"You can take me to the Dodsons now."

"Where'd she go?" asked Detweiler, puzzled.

Hawkin looked at him blandly.

"Downhill. The Dodsons?"

"Just up the Road, about half a mile." He ground the engine into life and coaxed it into the lowest gear, and the vehicle set off phlegmatically up the pitted road. "Great thing, this old gal. Just point her in the right direction and she'll climb right over everything, feels like. Ever see that
Star Wars
movie with those walking transports? Too unstable, of course, but that's what driving one of these feels like, just plodding along, sure and steady wins the race."

Worse than a taxi driver, thought Hawkin morosely as the man chattered away. That's another thing about Martinelli--she doesn't chatter. A person can think around her. Perhaps she wouldn't be such a burden as he'd originally thought. He pictured her setting off down the Road with her bag strap slung between her breasts, muddy water flying at every step, and wondered how she would get on.

Kate was getting on slowly but not steadily and with increasing annoyance. The Road seemed to be crawling with people, all of whom wanted to know what she was doing, what had happened, where was her car, or, in the case of the various police, if she wanted a ride to Tyler's. She shut off her ticking chronometer three times in the first mile, until finally she just decided to give a cheery wave and keep running. Her shoes were totally inappropriate to the job and would probably be ruined, her pant legs clung up to her knees, and after threatening all day it finally started raining, gently, a mile before the gate. When she hit the final quarter-mile straightaway where the road dropped through the meadow, she stopped abruptly. She had totally forgotten about the press. There must have been thirty cars camped across the Road from Tyler's Barn and even more cameras waiting to capture her bedraggled, sweaty, filthy self on film for all the Bay Area to feast their eyes upon. One of Trujillo's county cars was just edging through the gate. She ducked back around the corner, switched off her timer, and greeted it wetly when it appeared. Trujillo himself was at the wheel, with Tyler beside him. Trujillo wound down the window.

"What happened to the fire wagon?" Tyler asked, echoing the cry that had followed Kate for the last four miles, and from Trujillo came its mate, "Where's Hawkin?"

"Paul, can I talk with you for a minute?" He hadn't spent the morning sloshing around in the mud, she thought in disgust as he joined her beneath a sheltering tree, though with the slick soles on those shoes it's only a matter of time before that nice gray suit ends up in the mud. The thought cheered her considerably, and she smiled sweetly through the drips that ran down her face.

"If you don't have any urgent business up the hill would you mind going back to Tyler's so I can pick up my car? Hawkin's got me doing a timing test, round trip to the Donaldson house, but I really don't want my mother to open her newspaper and see her little girl looking like a mud slide survivor."

"Sure, no problem. We were just checking on a couple of my people, it can wait five minutes more."

"Look, I should tell you, Hawkin's going to want to know every car that was out of Tyler's shed on Monday, and then he's going to have every one of them gone over for traces. If you haven't started on the cars yet, you'd better do so."

"Thanks for the tip." They turned back to the car.

"Hello, Mr. Tyler. No, I'll sit in the back, it's all right. Mr. Tyler, I hope you don't mind turning back to the barn for a minute? I really couldn't face those reporters like this."

"Happy to. How--"

She interrupted firmly. "Why are the press staying behind the fence? I'd have expected to see them crawling all over the hill by now."

"That was Tyler's doing," laughed Trujillo. "He went around nailing up all these signs that say Trespassers Will Be Shot, and told them that it was private property and that everyone who lives here owns a loaded shotgun. When one of the television guys didn't seem to believe him, he gave them a little demonstration--for which he will probably be fined--and then, when he had their attention, said very nicely that if they're well behaved he'll come and talk to them every two hours. So far it's worked."

"Threats, bribes, and a disgustingly wet day. Very clever."

"I've had some practice in crowd control," said Tyler. "Besides, Hawkin authorized some money to come my way, and I've got two of the residents down in the kitchen turning out regular batches of hot soup and brownies."

"And looking photogenic," Trujillo said, grinning.

"They won't charge Hawkin for that. I think I saw a towel back there, if you want to dry your hair or something," he added. "You can put it over your head if you want to hide."

"Don't need to hide if it makes a poor enough picture for them." She toweled her hair with enthusiasm for the next few minutes as Trujillo threaded his way through the questions and cameras and into the privacy of the compound. Kate's little white box stood between someone's silver BMW and an ancient John Deere tractor with half its guts on the ground under a plastic tarpaulin. To the left stretched the roofed-over car storage shed. Kate eyed the vehicles speculatively as she ran a comb through her hair.

"Where is Miss Adams's car?"

Tyler seemed unsurprised at the question, which struck Kate as a bit odd.

"You heard about it, did you? It's the one there, with the blue cover." He pointed to a long, low shroud. "Want to see it?"

"Yes, I would." The rain had let up for the moment, and the damp gravel scrunched underfoot. Tyler peeled back the cover, and there stood a diamond among the hunks of everyday rock: a proud, gleaming maroon Jaguar, at least thirty years old, but in mint condition.

"Would you look at that!" exclaimed Trujillo, and they did.

"You haven't seen it before?" Tyler asked. "It's a beauty, isn't it?"

"Does she let anyone else drive it?" asked Kate.

"Oh, yes, I take it out every week or two. Doesn't do to let a nice car sit, not good for it. She pays me to keep it up, but I always tell her I'd do it for nothing."

"Nobody else, though?"

"No. Well, come to think of it, she let Angie Dodson use it to take Amy in to the doctor's one day when Tony had the truck, but that was, oh, October maybe. Yes, the middle of October, just before the harvest fest. She was scared to drive it, I remember, but I had both of mine apart and it was either that or the old truck, which would've been worse. Of course, I could have let her use someone else's, but I hate to do that without permission. It's asking for problems, with insurance and all that."

"But you could have, you said. Do you have some of the keys for these?" Kate waved her hand at the ranks of bumpers.

"Oh, yes," he said in all innocence. "There's keys for all of them on the board just inside the door. We have to be able to move them, to get at other cars or in case of a fire or something."

Kate met Trujillo's eyes as Tyler turned back to cover the Jag lovingly. She tipped her head toward the car, and he nodded in understanding. The Jag would be the first under scrutiny.

Her own car seemed small and tinny as she fished her dry clothes from the trunk, and the sound it made closing had all the expensive thunk of a child's toy.

"I need to get out of these wet things. Can I use the house?" she asked Tyler.

"Sure, go ahead. You know where the bathroom is. Have a shower if you want; there's a stack of towels in the thing that looks like a garbage can."

As Kate stripped off her clammy clothes she was amused to see that it
was
a garbage can--a plain, galvanized metal garbage can filled with thick, multicolored towels. A man who sits on a piece of property worth millions, with a leaky faucet and towels in a garbage can. Could he really have been innocently unaware of the drift of her questions about the cars? Or was his open admission that all the keys were in his possession just a bit too blithe? Was Tyler protecting Vaun Adams, his sometime lover, or using her as camouflage? Or did he not know enough to put her together with the murders? She shook her head at all these speculations, pulled on her rumpled sweats, combed her hair again, and went back out into the yard.

She threw her sodden clothes into the trunk of her car, unlocked the driver's door and tossed her weighty handbag onto the passenger seat, and remembered to switch on the chronometer before settling herself comfortably behind the wheel and starting the engine. She ran the windshield a couple of times against the accumulated drops, backed out into the gravel, nodded to the uniformed cop who now stood watch over the cars, and turned out onto the main road going north through the crowd. One of the television vans seemed to be having some problems with the transmitter on its roof. Two men were up working on it, but it didn't seem very likely that their efforts to revive it would succeed. It looked as if it had been swatted sideways by a giant hand. Kate slowed and peered curiously up at it; then she noticed the spray of small dents and lines in the paint, up along the edge of the van. She laughed and accelerated. Tyler's demonstration to the media on privacy rights.

There were three cars parked at the public park where Tyler's Creek met the sea. No, four--one pulled up among the trees where the creek path led towards the state reserve up in the hills. Probably curious citizens wanting to see where the body of Amanda Bloom had been found. If it were summer they'd be running a bus from town.

It was not raining just at the moment, but out over the ocean the clouds were massing, a black, lowering Pacific storm gathering its forces. Kate shivered and turned up the heater. Maybe she'd be lucky and it would come in slowly.

Traffic was light going over the hill into the Bay Area, and an impatient Audi rode her back bumper for half a mile before passing on a blind corner. She stifled the urge to violence and glanced at the time. Had traffic been this light on Monday? Once she'd successfully negotiated the downhill curves and entered the freeway in the direction of Palo Alto, she reached for her car phone and identified herself to the familiar voice of the dispatcher, a tough, middle-aged Japanese woman whom everyone called Marge, for reasons long forgotten, though her name was Yuki.

"Marge, can you ask around concerning traffic conditions over the pass on 92, Monday afternoon? I'm most interested in twelve-thirty to three eastbound, and, say, three to four westbound."

"I can give you instant service on part of that," her voice crackled over the receiver. "There was a spill there just after two-thirty on the downhill side. A lumber truck went over and blocked both lanes. My brother-in-law got caught behind it, for nearly an hour. Do you want me to check further?"

"Very interesting. Yes, I'll check with the highway patrol later, but keep your ears open."

"I always do." Her voice was prim behind the static.

Two-thirty. A very close thing, but if she'd left immediately after Amy, if she'd run fairly fast, if she'd driven just marginally above the speed limit, she could have slipped over the hill before the Road was buried in two-by-fours.

Kate pulled off the freeway toward the Donaldson's exclusive neighborhood and wound up the smooth, narrow road through fragrant bay and live oaks and madronas, and from a rise she saw the garden where Samantha had been playing seventy-two hours before. The area was immediately visible, just for an instant, but quite clearly, before the trees closed in again. The Road dipped back down among oaks and high walls before rising to curve around the Donaldson property and continue on into ever higher reaches of elevation and income. Kate pulled over on the far side of the Donaldson hedge and put her chin on the wheel. Ahead of her lay the heavily treed drive to the neighboring house, where faint marks in the grassy shoulder had been found Tuesday morning, nothing more definite than the hint of a hidden car.

"Why the hell can't we be having a drought this winter?" she said sourly into the silent car. She sat for several minutes, thinking thoughts that were not pleasant about a woman she wanted very much to be innocent. Finally she twisted the key, slammed the car into gear, and headed back to Tyler's Barn.