KAYLA WASN’T HOME. I looked in the usual places for a note, but she hadn’t left one. The words “easy come, easy go” sailed through what I loosely call my mind, but then I realized that that wouldn’t be her way. She was a note-leaver.
So, where was she?
Being a world-renowned gumshoe, my name on the lips of half the population of the country, I tried to rustle up clues. The bed was made. Her shampoo and toothbrush were in the bathroom. And as far as clues went, that was about it.
I wandered through the house, feeling a sense of dread build up inside me until it became unbearable.
She’d been fascinated with the idea that Victoria might be her half-sister. Winter might be her half-niece.
I stared out a window at the night.
Jacoba, Victoria, Winter, Miranda.
Perhaps Jeri and I had flown off to follow a lead that would take us nowhere because it wasn’t anything. Jacoba had been raped four decades ago. Ford had replaced Tricky Dick as president. Vietnam was over, but its scars were fresh. Apple hadn’t yet rolled out its first computer. No one waits forty years to get even. Hell, after forty years there’s usually no one left to get even with.
It was Tuesday, approaching midnight. I hadn’t spoken with Kayla since Monday morning. Foreboding crawled through me, making me feel hot. A film of perspiration popped out on my forehead, under my armpits, all over my body like a hot flash.
Victoria. Before, the name had been just a name. Now it sounded dangerous, positively sinister.
I wondered if Kayla’s Volkswagen was parked where it had been several days ago. I went through the fence and jogged five blocks to look. Her car was there. I didn’t like that at all.
Victoria’s name glided through my brain, like a black albatross on silent wings.
I jogged home and got my gun, still buried beneath that couch cushion. I changed into black jeans and a dark-blue long-sleeve shirt, feeling idiotic, feeling scared, too. I thought about phoning the police, but that felt a little over the top. The IRS-agent-turned-PI who found heads, calling the cops on three women living in the dead mayor’s house based on nothing more than a hunch—I couldn’t do it. Odds were they wouldn’t listen to me, wouldn’t even send anyone over to have a look at the place, but they might detain me for questioning or psychiatric evaluation, and I couldn’t afford to let that happen. I had to go. Now.
I got a penlight from the kitchen and checked the load in the little .357. The cylinder carried Plus-P Hydra-Shok ammunition that could do an amazing amount of damage. I snugged it into a holster at the small of my back, donned a dark windbreaker to conceal the gun, and went out the back way again.
I walked down Ralston, over the freeway overpass, down to Sixth and turned east. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have a clue. I did, however, have a feeling that Mortimer Angel was once again going to be a household name come Wednesday, and the thought was almost enough to give me an ulcer.
As usual, the Golden Goose had turned the night into day on North Virginia Street. It was just after midnight, but the sidewalk outside the casino, across the street from Sjorgen House, was full of touristy-looking people coming and going, on the prowl for Lady Luck. Two high-school-aged kids tore by on beat-up skate-boards, wheels tocking out a rhythm on the sidewalk. Low-slung cars cruised by, some of them with bass rumble issuing from open windows loud enough to cause brain damage.
I stood outside Edna’s yard looking at the house, but I felt too exposed to remain there for long, too easily seen by anyone who might be watching from behind those dark windows. If I stayed there, I might as well wear neon and set off a siren. I headed for the front door, then ducked around the side of the house, into the shadows.
The house rose up dark and silent, not a light on anywhere. Now what? Was Kayla in there? If she was, she was in trouble, if what had happened to Jonnie and Dave was any indication. If she wasn’t, then I was in trouble, because, I realized, I was going to get inside somehow and have a look around. I didn’t have a choice.
My hands trembled. When Jeri grabbed my shirt and yanked me up against the side of the house between two thick bushes, I nearly screamed.
“Quiet,” she hissed.
“Jesus H. Christ, Jeri!”
She pulled me down into a crouch. “Shut up!”
“What the hell are you doing here?” I whispered hoarsely.
“I could ask you the same thing, sport.”
“Kayla’s gone.”
Jeri stared at me. She had on black clothing. All I could see was a pale blob of face and her eyes, reflecting light. “Gone?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“And you think she’s here?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. I’ve got to find out.” I grabbed her arm. “Why’d you come back?”
“Why, Jeri?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t know. You changed clothes. What were you going to do, come in my house through a window and have a look around?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know. Watch the place. See if she was still there.”
“I don’t want you stalking me.”
“Looking isn’t stalking. Well, maybe it is. It won’t happen again, I promise.” Her hands found my face, held me. Her voice went soft. “I mean it. I’m sorry, okay? But I had to know, Mort. I just had to know. I love you.”
I sighed. “That’s not helping. Not now.”
“Sorry.” Her hands fell away. “I saw you come out at your neighbor’s place and head downtown.”
“Terrific. I forgive you. Now go away, Jeri.”
“Uh-uh. I’m going to help, even if it’s for her.”
“No. Get the fuck out of here.”
“Make me.”
Perfect. Just what I needed. Getting rid of Jeri by force would sound like the crash of a C-130 full of Humvee parts. Short of clipping her without warning on the jaw, I doubted I could manage it, and if I didn’t clip her just right, I’d end up in the hospital, which wouldn’t do Kayla any good, either.
“Jeri—”
“No, partner. I’m in.”
“Je-sus, Jeri.”
“You keep saying that. I said I’m in.”
She meant it. Nothing would change her mind. Some things you just know.
“Now what?” she asked. “How do we get in?”
“I hadn’t worked that part out yet.”
“Good plan.” She stood, then started to creep out from between the bushes. “Let’s try doors first.”
I grabbed her arm again. “Go home.”
“Read my lips. No.”
Hell. I couldn’t even see her lips. I followed her to the back of the house, into darkness. The rear door was locked. I didn’t want to try the front door with all that casino light blasting over from the Golden Goose. No point anyway. It wasn’t likely to be unlocked.
We crept over to the single-car garage I’d seen behind the house the other day. A quick peek through a dirt-encrusted window with the penlight disclosed a dark-blue GMC Safari van. It would look almost black at night, say around Ithaca. I didn’t like that at all. Now, beyond any doubt, I was going to get inside that house, which probably meant Detective Fairchild and I would have another entertaining discussion sometime in the near future.
At the side of the main house, I gave Jeri a boost and she tried windows. I had to admit it was easier than testing them myself since I would have needed a stepladder. At the north side, near the front, one of them slid upward at her shove. It rasped quietly as she lifted it until it jammed tight in its frame, then I lowered her to the ground.
“I’ll go in,” I said. “You wait here.”
“You’re good, Mort. You oughta do stand-up.”
“I’m serious.”
“You’d sound like a water buffalo going through there first. I’ll help you. Lift me up, huh?”
I did. If I hadn’t, she would have chinned herself on the sill and been inside in four seconds anyway.
From inside she reached down and took my hand, then pulled. It felt like I’d caught it in a conveyer belt. She’d braced herself and was lifting at least two-thirds of my weight. I’d known she was one god-awful strong lady, but some things impress more than others.
I came over the sill and piled in as quietly as I could, which was a joke. Inside, a dim greenish glow came from the casino through lace curtains backed with some kind of fabric. We were in the parlor from which Victoria had appeared when I’d last seen her. The parlor was musty and warm, full of angled shadows. It felt like a dangerous place to be, not a good place to turn on a penlight to have a look around, and if Kayla was in the house, it wouldn’t be in here. Across the room, the double doors were open. I could see into the foyer. Outside, the thumping bass rumble of some nimrod kid’s car moved south, rattling windows in their frames.
I eased off the windbreaker, using the idiot-thunder outside to cover the rustle of nylon, then dropped it back out the window to the ground between two shrubs.
As I loosened the gun in its holster, Jeri pulled my head down and put her lips to my ear. “Floor’s gonna creak like a son of a bitch,” she whispered.
“I know. Whole house is like this.”
“Slowly, Mort. Ease your weight down. If it starts to creak, pick another spot.”
Skulking 101. She started off, following her own advice. I went after her. It took two minutes to cross the room to the double doors. The floor wanted to sing an aria. Like she said, it was a sonofabitch.
She stopped in the foyer. “Up, or stay down here?”
I shrugged. How would I know? “Down here, I guess.”
We searched the entire ground floor, slowly. It took half an hour. I didn’t hear a thing from inside except the grumble of the floor under our feet and heart-stopping settling sounds. The house didn’t feel asleep to me. It felt as if it, or people in it, were watching us, waiting.
Heat in the house was oppressive. It had been a hundred degrees that day in Reno, and the house had soaked it up and kept it in. Sweat trickled down my back, drenching my shirt.
We ended up in the foyer again. Jeri looked at me and nodded at the stairs. I nodded back.
She went up first. She was better at this than I was. I placed my feet where hers had been.
It took five minutes to reach the top. My legs were trembling with the effort to move without a sound, like trying to do Swan Lake at one-fiftieth speed.
At the landing Jeri turned and headed down a hallway. I caught the back of her shirt and stopped her. “Winter’s room,” I breathed in her ear, pointing. “Second on the left.”
Again she nodded. She started off again. It was slow, laborious, miserable work in the heat of the house, darker up here on the second floor with its dearth of windows. Kayla could be in any of these rooms—or at a movie, or at a casino catching a late dinner, or home, now, waiting for me in bed.
Jeri eased a door open. Not Winter’s. I handed her the penlight and she switched it on. The light was dazzling. After the darkness it was like a World War II searchlight hunting the Luftwaffe over Great Britain. Sweat bathed my face, got in my eyes.
The light went off. Spots of color swarmed in my vision, fading slowly. Jeri came out, continued down the passageway.
I could tell this wasn’t going to work. Except that I couldn’t tell. Mostly it felt ridiculous, melodramatic, and illegal. But it did have a solid gumshoe feel, nothing like an IRS audit, so that was something.
Jeri crept past Winter’s room, then silently checked out another. We reached the end of the passage where it turned a corner and became stairs up to the third floor and Edna’s room. What else might be up there, I didn’t know. I hadn’t explored earlier. Now I wish I had.
I was going to tell her about Edna’s room when a bolt of pain shot through my back. I let out an involuntary howl and slammed into Jeri, then into a wall. I was pinned there, held by an explosion of pure agony.
“Don’t move, cowboy,” Winter breathed.
* * *
A light came on, the one Winter had turned on days ago, midway down the passage. In its yellow glow, with my face and chest pressed against old dusty wallpaper by the most terrible pain I’d felt in my life, I saw Jeri scramble catlike to her feet. She turned, hands coming up, prepared to maim or kill.
“Don’t,” Winter commanded, and whatever Jeri saw behind me froze her. She didn’t so much as twitch.
Footsteps approached, then Victoria said, “You, girl, get down on the floor now, or he’s dead. You have two seconds.”
The pain in my back was like a red glowing poker. I didn’t know what it was, but it was irresistible. It had me completely immobilized. If I tried to move or back up a tiny fraction of an inch, the pain got worse, much worse. I saw the danger of it in Jeri’s eyes, the way she shrank away.
She quickly sat on the floor.
“Lie down, girl,” Victoria said. “Facedown.”
Jeri did as she was told. I could hardly breathe, the pain was so enormous. Something was lodged in the meat of my back, at least an inch deep, maybe more. Another inch or two and it might find its way into a lung.
Victoria straddled Jeri and clicked handcuffs on her wrists behind her back. Another pair went around Jeri’s ankles. Then she stood up and passed out of my line of sight. Moments later there came a faint whisper-whir of air and a supernova of light filled my brain. The thud of something bouncing off my skull was like an echo that followed me down into absolute blackness.