WITTIER HOUSE, THE COLONY
MALIBU
TUESDAY EVENING
Cam marveled at her parents. They’d arranged an impromptu barbecue for as many of the detectives she’d met that day as would brave the traffic, all within a matter of hours. Some of the Calabasas sheriff’s deputies they knew as friends, and the sheriff himself, Dreyfus Murray, and his wife, Suzanne, made up the group on the back deck. Some of the neighbors they knew would remember Cam had been invited as well, to leaven the pot and cut down on complaints about all the cars clogging the street. She smiled when she heard Corrine Hill laugh at something her partner, Morley Jagger, said. She suspected they’d come out of curiosity. She saw Allard Hayes of San Dimas lean close to hear something Supervisor David Elman was saying. Whatever discomfort so mixed a group felt on arriving, it was fast gone when they were chowing down ribs and burgers with all the fixings—potato salad, baked beans, bags of chips, and Joel’s famous salsa, with enough beer to float the Queen Mary. And plenty of Heinz, courtesy of Cam’s earlier trip to Ralph’s Organics.
Cam overheard her mom telling Hill and Jagger, “You may well ask why Cam never followed in our footsteps.”
Her dad chimed in. “Nah, not Cam. For Christmas we wanted to get her a toy Oscar, maybe a tiara, a script to read, but she wouldn’t have it. She wanted a toy gun. That fired.”
She heard Hill and Jagger laughing. Would that help give her a rep of a badass? She looked over to her mom, who had moved on to introduce Supervisor Elman to Dreyfus and eased back, watching the two men eye each other. Then Dreyfus laughed, told him to take a bite of his hamburger. “You’ll tell me you’ve died and gone to heaven. Best burgers north of Santa Monica. I’ve always envied Joel’s way with hamburgers cooked on a grill.”
Lisabeth and Suzanne both laughed. “This was a great idea, Lisabeth, you and Joel pulled it off so fast,” Suzanne said. “And would you look at Cam, she’s smiling, working the room like a pro. She learned it from you.”
Joel Wittier came up, kissed his wife’s neck. “Look at Detective Jagger hanging on to every word out of Betsy Gilman’s mouth. Who’d have thought he’s a fan? Everyone’s enjoying themselves, I’m pleased to say, and my Cammie is the recipient of all the goodwill.”
Toward ten o’clock, when everyone was well oiled, stuffed to the gills with Suzanne Murray’s homemade strawberry ice cream, and most of the neighbors had floated off to their homes, Cam walked out to stand on the wide wooden deck, resting her elbows on the railing. Daniel joined her. She said, not looking away from the bright half-moon sparkling the water like diamonds, “When I think of home, this is what I picture in my mind.” She breathed in, pointed at the gentle waves fanning like lace onto the sand. “It’s so perfect, always there, the water, so beautiful, no matter its mood. You feel at once blessed and grateful to be alive to see it.”
Daniel said, “I grew up in Truckee, California, deep in the Sierras. I always believed there was no more beautiful place in the world. This”—he waved his hand at the endless stretch of ocean—“still seems alien to me. But this does seem timeless, too, like the Sierras, always there at your back.” He turned to face her. He saw her clearly in the moonlight—no makeup, her hair tousled from the light breeze off the water.
He leaned back, his elbows on the wooden railing. “Cam, your parents are amazing, pulling this cookout off in what? Under six hours? You did as much as you could today to get everybody thinking on the same page, as a task force. And this cookout might just seal the deal. We’ll see what happens. Oh yeah, when I thanked your folks, your mom kissed my cheek.”
“Huzzah, I say.”
“For your mom’s kiss or for the task force?”
Cam punched his arm. “Both, of course. You weenie.”