Reilly 13 - Dreams of the Dead (15 page)

Far from the building, Marianne Strong and Gene Malavoy smoked brown Sherman cigarettes, stamping their feet in the cold, exhaling smoke with cold bursts of angry French chatter. Neither nodded or acknowledged Nina, Paul, or Philip for that matter.

Eric Brinkman and Paul stood right outside the courthouse doors with Nina, a couple of rock-star apostles. Eric was well turned out in his tan sports jacket. Paul wore a tweed jacket that made his shoulders look wider than usual. One of the court clerks, a buddy of Nina’s, walked by, glanced at them, caught Nina’s eye, and gave her a discreet thumbs-up.

“Okay, we’ve got the time,” Nina said.

Eric looked at his watch, gold and heavy, a Rolex Datejust, Nina noticed.

“I’m ready. Gotta go,” he said.

“When’s the flight?” Nina asked.

“Two p.m. United Airlines out of San Francisco to São Paulo,” Eric said. “Then on to Porto Alegre. I’ll go straight to the lawyer’s address. We have been in e-mail contact and she’s cooperating.” He pulled on Prada sunglasses, which made his cheekbones stand out like hard knobs. “The lawyer says she’ll give me whatever other authenticating evidence she can. Obviously we won’t get Strong to sit down for a filmed deposition. I’ll spend as much time as I’ve got trying to track him through the law office. He’s going to be living near there somewhere. Porto Alegre is a very long way from São Paulo or Rio.”

Nina nodded. “Okay. I see that you’re handling a complicated situation as efficiently as possible. But please remember what I said. This is a con.”

“A fiasco,” Paul said suddenly.

Eric turned to him. “So you say. So you keep telling Nina here. That’s why you think he’s dead, am I right, Nina?”

Nina said nothing.

“You drove up to Tahoe right after Nina lost her husband, after Jim Strong became a fugitive, didn’t you, Paul? To help out your friend here?” Eric indicated Nina.

“That’s right.”

“Did you see Strong at any time? Get a line on him? Or obtain some sort of information that he was dead? Because if you know anything factual, Paul, you could save me a trip and save Philip Strong a considerable sum of money.”

“Yeah,” Nina interjected. “Tell us where he’s buried and we can all go home and relax.” Her light tone disguised the fright she felt hearing Eric coming after Paul like that.

Paul stared at her, then at Eric. “Hey, man, you talked yourself into the job, even though you don’t seem to have been very effective when the murders were going down. Now run with it.”

“No need to get offended. I’m asking a legitimate question. Maybe you’re hiding something, or you might open yourself up to
the possibility that maybe whatever you think you know could be wrong.” Eric pulled out a pair of soft leather gloves, slipping them onto his narrow fingers.

“How do you come to speak Portuguese, Eric?” Nina asked, trying to deflect the energy she saw fulminating in Paul’s fists. She needed information, not male strutting.

“An old girlfriend from Brazil. I lived there with her there for a year.”

“Best way to learn a language,” Paul said. It came out nasty instead of funny. He seemed to want to say more but controlled himself. Nina had the uncomfortable realization that the two men might not be able to work together, even if both were needed.

“Marianne Strong’s mother came from Brazil,” Nina said. “Let’s keep that in mind.”

“Intriguing, isn’t it?” Eric said.

“I interviewed Marianne in the course of my investigations for Philip when I was attempting to track down the missing money from the resort,” Eric continued. “Well, I’ve already told you I have suspicions about Marianne and Gene. I have their photos, too, to show around down there.”

Nina couldn’t see his eyes now, but she had seen him look into hers too deeply on their first meeting. He was very intelligent, very—sensitive somehow. Sexually conscious. He was watching her now, reading her thoughts, as if he knew all about the red bra—oh, dear, she was straying from the point at hand.

She couldn’t read him well enough. What he cared about, who he really was—she couldn’t tell that yet.

“I’ll call you from Brazil the minute I have something. Let’s meet when I get back. We’ll discuss everything then. By the way, it’s a pleasure to see a woman wearing a nice pair of heels.”

Paul stepped between them, scowling. Several people in the courtyard observed from a distance, pretending to notice nothing.

“No, Paul,” Nina said.

“No, what?” Paul said.

“No, uh, telling what Eric might stumble into, right? If there’s a con, it’s a lot of money. People will do a lot for a few hundred thou.”

“People will do a lot for a crappy television,” Paul said, still scowling.

“I suppose you would know more about that than I,” Eric said.

“What do you mean by that?” Now the two men were staring each other down.

“As a former detective, I’m sure you saw plenty of random violence. Why did you leave police work?”

“And not so random,” Paul said, ignoring that last question.

Nina had a sudden flashback to being fourteen at school in Monterey, the one year a couple of boys liked her at the same time. She liked the feeling then, how they jockeyed for her attention. Now she was old enough to understand that she had merely served as a handy justification for two hormone-ridden boys to punch each other.

“Please remember, your safety is the most important thing,” she said.

Eric smiled at her again. In contrast to his reaction to Paul, he seemed to like everything about her, including her motherly prudence. “I promise to be careful. I look forward to giving you a full report. Let’s hope this trip takes care of all the issues. Strong’s alive or he’s dead. We find out. We solve Philip’s problems, and we clink glasses.”

Eric didn’t kiss her hand this time, a good thing. He shook it professionally, the entire time moving his gaze between her eyes and Paul’s.

Nina watched him walk over to the parking lot, beeping the door of the eggplant-colored Porsche Cayenne he drove.

Paul took her elbow. “Coffee?”

“I have a bunch of appointments this morning. Got to get back to the office.”

“Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow. I have a couple of errands here
in town this morning, then back to Carmel. Got to keep the real business rolling, however Sisyphean the task, under the circumstances.”

“Don’t say that. We’ll come out of this. We will,” Nina said.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I’ll call tomorrow.” He walked her to her little truck, chatting about Wish and his misadventures, showing not a hint of trouble or pain. Nina did the same.

At the truck, he leaned over and kissed her lightly. “Sorry,” he said. “Forgot to ask. But you needed one.” He strode off.

“Grr,” she said, throwing the RAV into reverse.

“T
he sliced tri-tip with garlic mushrooms and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.” Kurt handed the waiter his menu and said to Nina, “A bottle okay?”

“Why not? I’ll go with grilled blackened salmon with a coconut-almond crust, and molten lava cake for dessert.” Nina ordered her favorites, hungry but understanding she would probably not finish all that food. The waiter shot away before they could change their minds.

Kurt and Nina sat together at one of her favorite Tahoe hangouts, Passaretti’s. Candlelight, white tablecloths. The wine came first, then food arrived, presented on patterned plates.

Kurt looked relaxed in a black turtleneck, his turquoise bracelet, and jeans. Nina wore a blue angora sweater that showed exactly what she wanted to show, a short skirt, and her Jimmy Choos. She was overdressed; some of the other women eating there wore jeans. However, she was on a mission. She forced herself to feel optimistic and ignore the niggling reality that he wanted to move back to Europe.

Her reggae ringtone. She ignored it.

The music again.

“Oh, go on,” Kurt said. “Get it over with.” He sipped his wine.

“I’ll just step outside for a minute, okay?”

Bob needed some help. She told him where to find some things,
then returned to the table to find Kurt tossing back a second glass too quickly. Any spell that might have been in the weaving had broken.

When the dinner plates had been cleared and they sat in their tiny island of silence among the other diners, Kurt said, “Being close to you and Bob over the past few months has been great.”

“Nice to hear.” She tasted the cake she had so anticipated, but couldn’t eat it.

He took her hand. His felt cool. “Remember what I said the other day?”

“You mean, when you said I didn’t love you?” Nina thought of her mother, dead for years, and mused about her mixed-up relationship with Nina’s father. She thought of Andrea who knew Nina’s brother, Matt, so well, with all his failings, and loved him to death nevertheless. Memories of Nina’s own past loves filled her, Kurt among them. “You can’t believe that. You’re my first. You’re Bob’s father. I’ll never stop loving you.”

“But there are varying degrees, aren’t there? You can love but not be in love. You aren’t in love with me, not anymore. It’s my observation that since I came back from Europe, we’ve become friendly. Not like lovers.”

“Does that mean you aren’t in love with me either?”

“Possibly.” That hurt. “I do know I’m very fond of you.”

“But we committed to each other—”

“To get to know each other. To try.”

Nina’s coffee came. She stared at the fumes billowing off it. “I’ll loan you money to tide you over. Aren’t Bob and I worth changing careers over? You thought you were finished as a professional musician when you came here, and I thought you had adjusted to that.”

Kurt looked at his hands, beautiful hands, the nails perfectly square, the skin smooth and white, the fingers curved as if ready to go wrestle down a grand piano. “When I couldn’t play, I saw the end of my career. Now I’m better. It’s a different game. Don’t you
see, Nina? It’s like a miracle. I’m a classical musician. It’s what I was born to do. Without that, I’m just an unemployed man with no special skills and no future.”

“Let me think.” Nina was hearing her whole life deconstruct, her cabin in the woods, their son, Hitchcock hopping like a rabbit through snow down the steep driveway. She thought of Sandy in the office, the smell of freshly ground coffee in the morning, the pleasure of its heat in winter. She tried to smile and took his hand. “If you really want it, if it’s what has to happen, we could think about moving. How’s that sound? Starting over together.”

He didn’t answer right away. Then he asked, “How would Bob react?”

“As long as we’re a family, he’ll be fine. I could sell my practice.” The thought choked her. She could barely speak, but forged onward. “We could pack up, compromise, go to San Francisco. Get a place in Noe Valley or someplace.” She was flailing. She had a failed marriage in Bernal Heights and had already rejected working downtown in a high-rise legal firm. “You’ll find work teaching piano. There’s the big symphony orchestra there, and—”

“Aw, hell, Nina.” He stroked her hand. “You don’t want to be in the city. You fit right in here.”

“I’m willing.”

He looked away. “I’ve looked at San Francisco. There aren’t any symphony jobs waiting in the Bay Area for me. The symphonies are in serious financial trouble.”

“Kurt, I-I can’t move to Europe. I couldn’t practice law there.”

“I know.”

“And Bob’s life is here.”

Kurt didn’t respond to that.

“I feel stupid, dressing up like this. I suppose I expected to seduce you. It’s been a month since you spent the night with me.”

He avoided her eyes. “I don’t think we should do that.”

She pushed her already mangled cake around with her fork.
“Last resort. Will you see a counselor with me? I can’t give up, not so easily.”

“Sure, if you think it will help you get through this transition.”

“No final decisions tonight?”

“No final decisions.” He smiled at her and paid for dinner with his almost-maxed-out credit card.

They went home separately, to their separate, empty beds.

L
ate Wednesday night, after braving a brief blizzard over the pass at Echo Summit, Paul arrived back at his condo on the hill above the Barnyard Shopping Center on Carmel Valley Road. It was already full spring back here at sea level, genista lining the gulch just past the parking lot. Finding his driveway blocked, he found a spot on the street, unloaded his suitcase, and went inside the cold apartment.

Even with all the lights on, the place didn’t have its usual welcoming feel. He looked in the fridge and scored a Sam Adams ale, but most of the food looked old and sad, so he gave up on the idea of eating, stripped down, turned off the lights again, and crawled between sheets that needed washing. He did not sleep much. When he did, he dreamed he was lying on a hard bunk wide-awake, watching spiders crawl across the floor, waiting for his cellmate to attack him.

Early Thursday morning he went for a morning run on Carmel River Beach in the fog. He ran as far as he could, up and back along the shore, passing a couple in a double sleeping bag who had no business doing what they were doing on a family beach. He ran like a guy who might not smell this ocean air or watch the powerful splashing waves again anytime soon.

Back at his condo, he cleaned up, then spent the morning dealing with personal issues—bills, rent, plumbing, a visit to the neighbor who routinely blocked his parking spot.

At noon he sat on his deck, surrounded by Monterey cypresses and curling wisps of fog, and remembered offering Nina a ring
sometime past on this very deck. She had turned him down. That memory made him get up to pour himself a Bushmills in honor of one of the worst moments of his life. So far.

Starving, he ate at the pub at the Barnyard, then drove the short distance to his office in Carmel. At the stoplight on Ocean Avenue, lost in thought, he pictured Brinkman in Brazil sitting across from a shady lawyer in some exotic office with ferns everywhere. Who had dreamed up this scam?

He was anxious to get back up to Tahoe, but he didn’t have an official reason to be there. He was damn anxious, in fact, but it would be much better to have a cover while he was watching events up there.