Ellipsis (15 page)

Minutes later, an ambulance roared off, carrying Chandelier Wells to the hospital. It was only then that I thought of Filson. When I looked toward the front half of the Lincoln, I saw a fireman staring down into the wreckage, then shaking his head. “This one's done,” he said, loud enough for me to hear. A small part of me was relieved that Filson hadn't turned traitor to his boss.

As a pair of police cars squealed to a halt down the block, Lark McLaren squatted beside me and tapped me on the shoulder. She was flushed and smudged and breathless, but back in control and routinely efficient. “Are you all right, Mr. Tanner?”

“Close enough. How's Sally?”

“She's getting herself together.”

“Good. Anyone else hurt?”

“No. Just …”

“Filson.”

“Yes.” Her voice was as soft as goose down.

“How's Chandelier?”

“I don't know. She looked awful but she was breathing. She even waved at me from the stretcher, I think. They've taken her to Alta Bates. I'll go there when they're finished with me here.”

“I guess this means the tour is canceled.”

“She never cancels. Only postpones.”

“Well, I hope she's all right. When you talk to her, tell her I'm sorry her bodyguards screwed up.”

“I'm sure nothing more could have been done.”

“Something more can always be done. That's why I don't like the work.”

Lark turned away, then looked back. “I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“I shouldn't have expected you to help. I wasn't thinking of the danger, I'm afraid. I was just thinking of Chandelier.”

“Don't worry, that's not why I did it.”

She started to go, then stopped again. “Jed was a little cavalier about the job, I think.”

“I think I was, too.”

“But in a way he saved her life.”

“How so?”

“That funny old car? The Lincoln? He bought it from an African dictator when he first took the job. Mobutu, or one of those. Chandelier wanted a Mercedes, but Jed insisted on the Lincoln. It was built like a tank, he said—steel plates welded all around the rear seat. Cost a fortune to ship over here, but he said it would be worth it if anyone ever made a try for her.”

I looked at the part of the wreckage that had remained intact. “I'd say he was right.”

Just then a pair of Berkeley cops broke out of a pack by the bookstore and started walking our way. We stopped talking till they arrived.

The taller one looked at Lark. “You're the secretary?”

“Administrative assistant. Yes.”

“Let's talk.”

He motioned for her to follow him, which she did after patting me on the shoulder. “I'll see you at the hospital,” I said at her back. She waved to show she'd heard me.

The second cop was short and stout and black, with a mustache and a bald head and a uniform two sizes too small. He winced when he sat on the curb beside me. “Disk,” he said in explanation, then got out a notebook and consulted it. “You're Tanner.”

“Right.”

“You look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“Tried to pull a Rambo, I hear.”

“I'm not sure what I was trying to do.”

“Need medical treatment?”

“Not yet.”

“Good.” He looked at his notebook again. “You're a PI.”

“Right.”

His eyes left the notebook and scrolled over my face. “You're the guy who shot Sleet a year or so back.”

“You knew Charley?”

“Some.”

“He was my best friend.”

“Which makes it odd that you drilled him.”

“
Odd
isn't the word for it.”

He started to say something else, but gestured toward the Lincoln instead. “What happened out here?”

“Blew up.”

“Bomb?”

“Probably.”

“See it happen?”

“Nope.”

“Know who did it?”

“Nope.”

“What's your relationship to the victim?”

“I'm working for her.”

“Full-time?”

“No.”

“Doing what?”

When I tried to smile, my face wouldn't let me. “Bodyguard.”

He chuckled mordantly. “Nice job.”

“Could have been worse.”

“Not for you.” He pointed toward the front seat. “The dead guy your partner?”

I shook my head. “Full-time chauffeur. Met him yesterday for the first time.”

“Where?”

“Jimbo's.”

“Why there?”

“On the job. Publication party.”

He nodded as if he understood. “Former feeb, I hear.”

“So do I.”

“Any chance this was terrorists?”

“Not much.”

“Personal grudge?”

“Maybe.”

“Sex thing?”

“Maybe.”

“What else?”

“Disgruntled groupie.”

“The Wells woman some kind of star?”

“Writer. Big seller.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Me, I only read Moseley. Got anything at all we can use?”

“Not yet.”

“What's that mean?”

“I don't know.”

His voice hardened and his hand gripped my arm till it hurt. “She's our job now, Tanner. Your job is to forget about it.”

I looked at my swollen hands, then at the black hunk of scrap still smoking in the street. “That's going to take a while,” I said.

Chapter 15

By the time the cops were through with me it was pitch-dark. Traffic was still being rerouted around the crime scene like fireflies circling a haystack. A scruffy band of onlookers was still debating the causes of the blast—the fatwa against Salman Rushdie made the list (Steinway had
The Satanic Verses
on sale), followed by animal rights activists (Chandelier sometimes wore fur), and the Hayward branch of the Aryan Nation (three books back, Chandelier had come out against white supremacy). If I'd had any ideas on the subject, I would have kept them to myself, but as it happened, I didn't. All I knew for sure was that I'd been hired to do a job and hadn't done it.

Although I wanted to go to the hospital, I was pretty unpresentable, even for Berkeley. So I fought the battle of the bridge at commute time, got home in just over an hour, then took off my clothes and examined my burns in the mirror. When I saw what was going on with my hands, which had assumed the color and texture of watermelon without the water, I considered going to the hospital for treatment. Instead, I opted for two glasses of grapefruit juice, under the two-pronged theory that the worst part of burns is dehydration and grapefruit juice tastes bad enough to cure anything. After I showered as much of my body as I could stand to get wet and changed clothes with more pain than I'd experienced since I'd been shot, I decided to defer the hospital till later and got back in my car and drove west.

Millicent Colbert and her husband, Stuart, lived in an elegant stone structure on Santa Ana Way near the crest of St. Francis Wood, up the hill from Stern Grove about a mile east of the ocean. The Colberts are the parents of Eleanor, a five-year-old girl who was carried to term by a surrogate mother and presented to the Colberts pursuant to their contractual arrangement with the surrogate. What the Colberts don't know, and neither does anyone else but the surrogate, is that the odds are better than even that I'm the father of the child. I didn't plan it that way, and in fact I took steps to prevent it, but for reasons of her own, the surrogate was so hostile to the prospect of giving birth to Stuart Colbert's offspring that she replaced the embryo implanted at the fertility clinic with one produced by the two of us, without my knowledge or consent. Her perfidy infuriated me when I learned of it, but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Life can be funny like that. When it isn't being horrible.

Because I'd had something to do with salvaging the arrangement when the surrogate became balky at providing a child to the Colberts, Millicent considers me Eleanor's godfather even though I declined the honor when she offered it formally. Although publicly my status is only de facto, Millicent keeps me posted on Eleanor's progress and lets me visit whenever I want, which I make sure happens no more than once a month so I won't become either suspicious or a pest. Millicent is an excellent mother and Stuart's an adequate dad, but every time I leave their house, I wish I could take Eleanor with me.

I pulled to a stop next to the curb. People were coming home from work. The homes they entered were all huge, the cars they drove were all expensive, the lights in the windows that welcomed them were all bright and congenial. All kinds of wonderful things were going on inside those homes, no doubt, and some dastardly things as well. But when you've got the kind of money these people have, you get to keep both behaviors private unless someone shows up with a subpoena.

I rang the bell and waited. A moment later, Millicent opened the door. “Marsh,” she enthused. “How wonderful.” Her smile bloomed, then withered. “But I'm afraid Eleanor isn't here. Stuart just took her to a computer fair at her school.”

“Computers at age five?”

Millicent laughed at the Luddite. “She's a real geek, Marsh; she's been on-line for almost a year. She e-mails children in France and Bulgaria.”

“I guess I'd know more about that if I were on-line myself.”

“You should be, you know. Then you could e-mail Eleanor every day.”

“I don't have that much to say.”

“It doesn't seem to stop anyone else.”

She clutched my arm with her usual exuberance. I tried not to flinch as she ran roughshod over my burns. “Don't worry about Eleanor,” I said. “This time I'm here to see you.”

Millicent's blush was dramatic, so much so that she turned away so I couldn't see her reaction. I think she was afraid I was going to make a pass at her and what stirred her was that she wasn't sure how she was going to respond. Given our past, which featured lots of friendship and a little flirtation over and above our common bond with Eleanor, I was tempted to meet expectations. But the pain radiating off the scalded flesh beneath my sleeves helped me keep my leanings under control, as did a quick flash on the image of Jill Coppelia.

“Come in, Marsh; come in,” Millicent managed finally, her usual graciousness momentarily shouldered aside by the uneasy ethic of the moment.

“I'll only be a minute,” I said as she led me into her sumptuous home.

Stuart Colbert ran a women's clothing store, so he was up-to-date on fads and fashion and had the money to keep pace with each. As a consequence, the living room had been redecorated thrice in the five years I'd known them. At present, the drapes and carpet and wall coverings were baroque and overabundant, a riot of paisley weaves and floral prints complemented by the dozen bouquets of cut flowers strewn about the room in antique cuspidors and wooden buckets. The couch and chairs were formed of dainty frames and shiny fabrics, the tables were built of dark hardwoods no doubt appropriated from some colonial conquest. The fireplace was a work of art all to itself, a symphony of wrought iron and painted porcelain. I'm sure the room was a triumph for some celebrity decorator, but I would have gone crazy in the place myself.

Thankfully, we traversed the living room and entered the library, which was far more my style: leather and plaid, oak and brick. We sat side by side on the husky couch and crossed our legs simultaneously. “Do you want coffee, Marsh? Or a beer?” Millicent asked uneasily. It might have been the first time in our acquaintance that we weren't being chaperoned by a child playing somewhere in view.

“No, thanks.”

“You look … distracted.”

“I am, a little. And that's why I'm here.”

She reached out a hand and touched my wrist, which happened to be where I was burned worst. This time I couldn't suppress the flinch.

Millicent frowned and lifted her fingers, then examined my wrist more closely. “What's wrong, Marsh? Are you hurt?”

“I got broiled just a little.”

“Let me see.”

Because I'm not nearly as tough as I act, I let Millicent play nurse. When she peeled back my sleeve she recoiled from what she'd exposed. “Good gracious. Don't tell me you were trying to make French fries again.”

I shook my head. “I've moved beyond my Martha Stewart phase.”

“Then what on earth happened?”

“I got too close to a car.”

“But how did that …?”

“The car was on fire at the time.”

Her eyes widened. “It wasn't yours, was it?”

I shook my head.

“Then why were you so …?”

“Because my client was inside it.”

“What client?”

“Chandelier Wells.”

Millicent's hands were a pantomime of prayer. “Oh, my God. Did something happen to Chandelier?”

“Her car blew up. Probably from a bomb. I was supposed to stop it and I didn't. Since you were the one who recommended me, I wanted to tell you before it hit the news.”

Millicent hugged herself as though we were meeting in Nome. “A bomb? Really?”

“Afraid so.”

“Good Lord. She's all right, isn't she?”

“I don't know. I doubt if anyone else does, yet. She had to have been badly burned, but I don't know the details. They took her to Alta Bates over in Berkeley. I'm going there after I leave here.”

“Maybe I should go with you.”

“I'm sure there's nothing you can do for her at this point. My guess is she'll be in intensive care for quite a while and in the burn ward for quite a while after that.”

“How awful.” Millicent thought it over, then stood up. “Well, there's
one
thing I can do, at least,” she said firmly, then strode off toward the door. “I'll be back in a minute.”