Twenty-Nine

Billie hovered while sitting still. Technically an impossibility, but Emma felt the blonde’s propellers whir as she leaned forward, her eyes on the report she’d completed, her antennae waving wildly, seeking approval. The girl sent up a dust cloud of anxiety every time she entered a room.

But she wasn’t a dummy. Her report was well done. The fancy schools had taught her how to write a coherent sentence, which is more than could be said of most of Emma’s transient help. Plus, to Emma s great surprise, it was short. To the point, with nothing irrelevant or tangential added in. “So the runaway ran back,” Emma said. “Returned herself.”

Billie flashed a look of wary alarm. Did she think Emma’s remark meant she hadn’t done her job? Jesus, but this girl should be on medication. Had to watch every damned word with her.

“Wish she really had gone home,” Billie said. “She’d have saved me the need to make a statement and, most likely, to testify in the criminal case. And she could have saved Sophia a bucket of blood.”

“Screwed-up families.…” Emma patted the report. “What now?”

“Me? Whatever you say—I thought that harassment thing? I was going to pose as a new hire, or have you changed your—”

“I meant with them. The Redmonds. The parts that don’t get on a report.”

“Oh.”

Billie looked worried again. The girl needed a muscle relaxant, a stiff drink, or good sex.

“Arthur’s out of business,” Billie said, “of course. Sophia’s got a messed-up set of kidneys. A ‘Be careful what you ask for’ story. She’s going to be on disability legitimately. What she wanted was the cash to live without Arthur and he provided it by shooting her. She told Penny she’d cooperate with the police. Which means she’ll cut a deal. She said he—more honestly, they—made ‘designer’ films. Repping kids’ clothing didn’t pay the Marin mortgage and lifestyle, and Just Kidding was mostly a front for the movie biz. These were one-of-a-kind films and not for sale—except to the man who ‘scripted’ his private fantasy. Sophia insisted it was akin to having one’s portrait painted. A privately commissioned work of art, not pornography.”

Emma snorted. “Right. The art of pandering and child endangerment and sexual abuse and prostitution.” She shook her head and sighed. Too much of the genius of mankind went into justifying its stupidities. “They’ll bilk us,” Emma said. “I can hear Sophia whining about poverty even now. We’ll sic Zack on them, but even so…”

Billie looked offended, as if Emma had said something off-color. Little Miss Ingenue, blue-green eyes all innocent. As if she didn’t have a mortgage, bills to pay. “Money matters,” Emma said. “Ethics and adventure and righting wrongs is well and good, but you still have to pay for the gas in your car and the food you eat.”

Billie nodded.

She’d show she had nonmaterialistic human concerns, too, annoying as it was to feel the need to do so. “So…the kid, this Penny, you think she can she do the job? Run a house and take care of her brother?”

Billie shrugged. “She’s eighteen. Old enough. I told her I’d check in with them. Gave them my number to call if there was any problem.”

Emma raised both eyebrows but said nothing. Did Billie honestly consider becoming a surrogate mother was what was meant by not getting over-involved?

“A formality,” Billie said after a moment. “They won’t call me. When I drove them home, their neighbor came over and invited them to dinner and said she’d keep an eye out for them. Although with three kids under four, it’s hard to believe she has a lot of free time. But in case of emergency, she’s right there.”

“Who’s that?” Emma looked at Billie’s notes. “Oh, right. The lad from Nevada.”

“His wife.”

Emma cleared her throat. “They have any lead on the people who were in the houseboat?”

“Depends how good a photographer Penny turns out to be. She only had one chance.” Billie brushed at the air dismissively. “I know I don’t need to, and I don’t know if pure curiosity is a good or bad thing, but I wish I knew more, like how the operation worked.”

“Well, somebody’s going to be hired to investigate that for the trial…but not us,” Emma said with a smile.

“If there’s a trial. One fast photo is all the evidence so far. That, and a long spell of furniture rentals. Who’ll be able to verify that the child in the photo—assuming you can see her at all—is really a child? It doesn’t sound as if this is going to have a tidy ending.”

“Nothing does,” Emma said. “This couldn’t. The Tassios are going to have to limp on. The Redmond kids.… Nothing real is tidy.”

Billie was silent for a moment. “How did the Redmonds find those awful men? There must have been lots, because Penny saw a different sofa go into the house every time she was there, and surely there were times she wasn’t around. And the children, for God’s sake—where did they find them? Where were their parents while this was going on? What happens to them now? Or do I even want to know?”

Emma liked shapely stories as much as the next person, but that wasn’t how it worked. “Your report’s fine,” she said, ending their tête à tête. Time was money, whether or not Billie-girl could bear the idea. They’d already lost the day before while Billie chauffeured Penny to the hospital, to the borrowed car, to the house in San Geronimo, to the bus stop for her brother, and then home. She was going to bill the Redmonds for every cent of it—and fat chance of collecting any. So it was charity work, and now they needed hard currency before they became a charity case themselves. She lifted the thin file folder with the basics of the sexual-harassment suit they’d discussed.

“Meanwhile, you want me to go online?” Billie asked. “Dig more about Glenda the Good or anything?”

“Not right now.”

“So that’s it, then?”

“Something else?” Emma asked in a voice that wasn’t eager for anything, she hoped.

“Not really.” This time, Billie made it halfway to the door, then turned. “Look—this wasn’t on the report. I know you think I go on and on, or babble…”

Like she was doing right now.

“I wanted my report to be really tight, but the thing is—Penny accused Arthur of killing Stephen Tassio. I know that isn’t our business, but it bothers me. Even if he thought Stephen and Penny knew about the porno business. Why only Stephen? He wouldn’t be any safer with only one of them gone. I don’t know if the police are taking her accusation seriously—there’s enough real stuff there before they even would get to murder, but—”

“Whoa! Arthur Redmond?”

“That’s what Penny told the police. Arthur isn’t charged or anything yet, but—”

Stephen’s college yearbook photo had been on the front pages of the I.J. and the San Francisco Chronicle. Handsome young man, he’d been. “He didn’t do it,” Emma said. “Couldn’t have.”

Billie’s head pulled back a fraction and she stood waiting, mute as a startled sheep. Sometimes Emma got the sense the woman was actually afraid of her, although it was a complete mystery why anybody would fear a plainspoken, hardworking, middle-aged woman—her benefactor, in fact, who showed Billie every courtesy and concern.

“I happen to know that Arthur Redmond was at a Bay Boosters meeting that night. Started with drinks at five P.M., right before we reached Stinson, and didn’t end till ten or so. By which time, Stephen was long dead. So when and how could Arthur Redmond have done it?”

Emma could almost see through Billie’s skull to one of her redeeming traits—her curiosity—as it did battle with the sheep cowering under that milky skin.

“How do you—”

“Know?” Emma asked crisply. Damn. No need to have snapped back so quickly. Her personal life was personal. Shouldn’t have taken the bait in the first place. Had to show off, be She Who Knows. “Because,” she said, “…A friend was there. He told me.”

Billie turned on her blue-green stare again, and Emma began to suspect that it was a device she consciously used, a mask. That she played on people’s assumptions. People exactly like Emma. The woman might be more interesting than suspected. Behind that neutral mask, Billie was raising eyebrows, asking what the story was, Toots. She was finding it difficult to imagine that Emma regularly ascertained where Arthur Redmond had been of an evening. In lieu of that, and given that the two of them hadn’t returned from Miriam’s until late, and even then, Emma hadn’t been rushed or worried—this friend who knew must be a very special friend indeed. The sort you can contact at any time. Or the sort who is waiting at home when you return. Or vice versa. Very interesting.

She watched Billie’s poker face, masking racing gears and wheels that popped with the shock of Old Lady Emma’s having a male friend she saw late at night…. Was it possible? Could it be that Emma the over-the-hill hag had a lover?

Go ahead, deduce, deduce. Don’t waste all that tuition spent on your logic courses. Detect. But she’d help, too. “The group has a tradition,” Emma said. “They insult each other as a way of bonding. You know, the how ugly so-and-so or his sport jacket is, how bad his golf game is, that kind of thing. I don’t get it, but neither do I have the time, energy, or inclination to analyze what makes men tick. The group, at least the money it raises, does good things for the county, and the jokes are one of the ways they raise cash—they pay for the privilege of insults. The reason I know was that the night we were at Stinson, Redmond’s joke managed to offend those rhino-hides, and that takes a lot. He was so gross that even those whose race, sexual preference, country of origin, and income level weren’t insulted were turned off. That’s the only reason he was mentioned.” She folded her hands.

“So who…? I don’t like to think this way, but Penny had a car that night—Alicia’s—and she knew where Stephen was, and she’d been dumped. Of course, Yvonne…”

Emma scowled. “Of course Yvonne. But the police get paid to speculate about that,” she said. “We don’t.” Far as she was concerned, this conversation was over, and if that was as far as she was concerned, then that was as far as it was going.

Billie started to shape a word. Emma suspected the word was but. Then apparently she decided against speech and merely nodded.

The but hung in the small office like a hard-edged modern sculpture.

“Well,” Emma said cheerfully. “Good going on this one but I hope the next one’s a little less physical.”

BUT!

“We’ll read about it in the papers,” she said.

“Thanks—about my report and all,” Billie said before making her exit, leaving Emma a souvenir, the two-ton BUT! hovering above her head. Emma stared at the window. The sky was slating over again to the point where she stood up and turned on the overhead lights. Presidents’ weekend, too. So much for the myth of its balmy weather. And too bad about Billie. Bright, but she had the marks of not lasting. She’d get all entangled in the what ifs and what thens, be discouraged by reality, and then she’d quit.

Emma wondered how long it would be before she had to advertise again. She might start a small pool with Zack and George on that.