Nineteen

God almighty, it was hot. I had thought they were all crazy, but I got it now: if you start whining at ninety there’s nowhere to go when a hundred draws its fist back and socks you. A hundred degrees is just too damn hot. As we toiled across the car park of the Cuento Golf Club, I felt the sweat begin to gather between my shoulder blades. I felt my thighs begin to slip and slide inside my shorts and my hair soften and darken on my head. I felt drips begin to form along my jawline and my feet begin to squish from side to side on my rubber soles. I felt my lubricated buttocks begin to work independently instead of as a team and start to chew my knickers up into a sodden wad in between them.

“God, it’s hot,” said Todd.

I pulled open the door to the clubhouse foyer and felt the much-more-delicious-than-it-sounds sensation of my puddle of back sweat cooling in the frigid air, the rivulets coursing down my arms and legs, evaporating into no more than little stinky trails through the dust on my skin. I also felt my hair frizz. Nothing’s free in this life. I plucked the wad of wet knickers out of my bum crack in as ladylike a way as I could manage and headed for the hostess desk cum cloakroom.

“Are you members, sir? Madam?” said the child, one of those spending the summer, as Todd had once, earning peanuts and losing cherries to lecherous doctors in vomit-themed golf attire.

“We’re not,” I said. “We’ve come to meet someone who’s playing a guest round today.” I could feel Todd start to gather steam to take over. I had just pegged us at the lowest rung of the clubhouse pecking order. Hangers-on of fly-by-nights. “Mr. Dolshikov. His wife left him here about an hour ago and set off on her own. I’m afraid we’ve got some very bad news for him.”

The child scratched a badly covered spot at the side of her mouth and pondered all of this. “I can send a cart out to find him,” she said. “It’s too hot for you to walk.”

I looked at Todd and managed to squeeze out a tear. It was easy. I’d sweated cheap sun block into my lashes crossing the car park and my eyes were stinging.

“I think we should just let him finish his round. It’s the last round he’s ever going to play before we tell him the news.” Todd nodded and winked with the eye furthest from the hostess. I turned back to her. “If we could just wait. There’s … nothing to rush for.”

“Is everyone okay?” she said. “In his family?”

“I’m afraid not,” I said.

“Oh my God,” said the child. She licked the gloss right off her lips. Maybe it wasn’t a zit after all. Maybe this was a nervous habit and she’d licked herself raw. “Did his wife make it home okay? It didn’t happen near here, did it?”

“She did not make it home,” I said. She hadn’t; she lived in Texas. “But the death happened off the golf club property.” It had; Clovis died at Casa Bombaro.

“Oh my God!” said the child. She put up her hand and picked at the sore. Maybe she’d get through the summer without any of the lecherous doctors bothering her after all. “Please sit down. Can I bring you a cold drink? It’s so hot.”

“Just a glass of white wine,” said Todd. It sounded so much like just a glass of water until so near the end that the child was unfooted and only nodded and scurried away. She brought one for me too.

Todd raised his glass to me before he drank. “Masterful,” he said. “And since you were trying to be a total porn-star Pinocchio with the twelve-inch nose and yet tell no actual lies … I’m assuming we’ve got some real bad news to deliver.”

“Ew,” I said. I swore I’d never say that. Like I swore I’d never use the drive-through postbox, eat raw kale in a salad, or download an app to help me count sit-ups. But in the end, California got me.

∞

Jan “Bang-Bang” Dolshikov emerged into the foyer of the clubhouse from its nether regions about twenty minutes later, with a towel round his neck and rubber mob-caps over his golf shoes to stop them spiking the parquet.

“Wait,” said Todd, watching him approach. “That’s the husband of that dumpy chick in the bad shorts? No way.”

“Poor Sparky,” I said. I stood up. “Jan? Lexy. We met at Visalia’s the other day?”

“If you’re looking for my wife,” he said, biting the word off and narrowing his eyes, “she flaked out on me and went running home.”

Wow. What a prick.

I didn’t say the words but, from the look he gave me, I think they might have been printed on my face. He turned away and stalked out, the rubber bundles on his shoes making the kind of squeaky clumping noise that could ruin a much grander exit.

“So your golf game was ruined, eh?” I said as I caught him up halfway down the steps.

“I had to ask to join the couple ahead of us, like a fifth wheel,” he said.

“Third, surely,” said Todd. “But never mind that, we need to talk to you. Should we get into your car and turn the air on?”

“I have nothing to say to you,” he told us, “I don’t know who killed my uncle-in-law and I don’t much care. He was a stubborn old fool who didn’t know when to step aside. My wife spent her life tiptoeing round him and expected me to do the same. I didn’t get where I am today by letting old men, labor unions, or family slow me down.”

“Now,” said Todd, “was it Gandhi or Mother Teresa who said that?”

“It’s good of you to be here supporting her,” I said, “given that you feel that way.”

“I’m here to make sure the factory keeps running smoothly,” said Jan.

“Oh, come off it,” I said. “I mean, yeah I get it—alpha male, blood on the boardroom floor, yeah, yeah. But keep it real.”

Jan regarded me steadily. “Did you have something you wanted to ask?” he said.

“Yes. How did Serpentina get here so quickly?” I thought if I accused his wife, even obliquely, he’d spring to her defence. “Visalia can’t understand how she made such good time unless she knew in advance she’d be needed.”

“Well, of course she knew in advance,” Jan said.

That was easy, I thought.

“We were coming to lay out the new business plan. Post-merger.”

“Right,” I said. “Boomshik-a!”

“Bullshit-a! I already said to you I’d never let family sentiment get in the way of business, and the Dolshikov name is a bigger brand.”

“What about your cousins?” I asked. “Are they ‘building the brand’?”

“Exactly,” Jan said. “Their Bill and Melinda routine gives me cover for smarter business dealings than I’d have otherwise, in Dallas or in Jersey. But now I have a wife to take care of all that crap, I can let them get back to doing what they’re best at. They’ll be taking over in California.”

“How did you meet your wife, Mr. Dolshikov?” said Todd suddenly.

“I flew to New York to a dinner I knew she’d been attending and wooed her.”

“And was the marriage your idea,” I added, “or did the whole board have to vote?” His eyes had narrowed to Voldemort-nostril dimensions. He didn’t answer me. “And what makes you think Visalia will just ‘step aside’?”

He made a sound I didn’t immediately recognize as a laugh. “Whether she’s headed to Sicily or solitary, she’s out.”He opened his SUV, kicked the booties off his shoes, dropped the towel from around his neck, and, leaving all of it lying on the hot tarmac, he climbed in and drove away.

“Wow. That guy is a prick,” said Todd, my twin soul.

“Yep, he only wanted Sparky so he could get his mitts on the West Coast. And Sparky’s just wising up to it now.”

“Did she never look in a mirror and wonder?” Todd said, beeping open Kathi’s SUV. “The open dating market doesn’t make mistakes like that.”

I grimaced. That little pearl of wisdom was quite a bit too close to home. “He definitely thinks Visalia bumped Clovis off, doesn’t he?” I said.

“Or he’s pretending to so we don’t suspect it was him,” Todd said. “Oh God, it’s too hot. Let’s go back, have cool showers and naps, and get together later over a jug of margaritas. Try to think this through.”

I lifted my bum up off the seat, hoping to get the cold draft a bit further up my shorts. Maybe even out at the waistband if I was lucky. “If anyone in the factory got wind of the Dolshikov take-over, it puts the kibosh on them harming Clovis, doesn’t it?”

“Does that help my mom?”

“Not really,” I said. “The more suspects the merrier, in that regard.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Todd. “Would you stop dry-humping the a/c and put your seatbelt on, please?”

I let my bum drop onto the seat again.

“Unless they thought the Dolshikov take-over was Clovis’s idea. No, listen! If anyone at the factory heard about the Sicily retreat and the Dolshikov offensive and thought they were two halves of the same coin, they’d want to stick a spanner in it, wouldn’t they?”

“Stick a what? And that’s a lot of big ifs, Lexy.”

“Just sayin’.”

“Well, how about this then?” Todd said, as we rumbled under the bridge, in sight of the motel. “What if Sparky knew deep down that Jan only wanted her for her merger potential. Wouldn’t she have a great motive to make sure nothing got in the way of it? If she knew her uncle would disapprove of the marriage and never agree to her plans, maybe she killed him.”

“She was on a plane from Dallas.”

“But whoever it is we’re blaming,” said Todd, “we know they must have had an accomplice. There was one to set it up and one to cut him loose.”

“I’ve got two problems with that,” I said. “Why wouldn’t accomplices coordinate at least enough to make sure the right one had the handcuff keys? And also, how do the cops know that the handcuffs weren’t opened by keys? And three, why didn’t Mike the cop know what handcuffs I was talking about? I watched her face and she had no idea. But that’s what she told Bilbo—handcuffs and ankle-cuffs.”

We had arrived and parked in the shade of the balcony.

“So we’ve achieved absolutely nothing today at all, have we?” said Todd.

Just then Della’s door opened and little Diego came bounding out, clapping his hands in anticipatory glee.

“Oh, Jesus,” I said. “We’ve achieved this.”

“I got it,” said Todd. “I’ll tell him there’s three fishies coming tomorrow.”

“I owe you,” I said. “Interior design, lingerie, car hire—Oh! Your car’s parked at the cop shop, by the way.”

“Roger drove it home.”

“So yeah. Car hire, food and drink, pet procurement, companionship … ”

“Fucking with your louse of an ex-husband … ”

“Invaluable,” I told him. “Can’t put a price on that.”

∞

For some reason, once I was out of my tepid shower and had the first half-pint of frosty pinot grigio down me, I phoned my mum. Maybe it was seeing Todd with Barb; maybe it was listening to the icy blast of Jan talking about his marriage; maybe it was the thought of Dorabelle sitting all alone in that ridiculous house with her edited memories. Part of it was saying to Todd I’d be at the airport headed east as soon as this case was closed and I was off the hook for Visalia’s bail. Not having a job or a flat to go back to was bothering me. Funny. Never bothered me before.

Who knows. I dialled the number and it was only when my mum answered, groggy and strained after one ring, that I remembered the time difference. It was three o’clock in the morning.

“Mum, I’m sorry. I zoned out and forgot. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Didn’t mean to wake me? What did you think I’d be doing at this time of day? Of course, you woke me.”

“I forgot the time,” I said.

“Lexy,” I heard her say over her shoulder. “She’s fine. Just felt like phoning and so she just phoned. Sleep be damned.”

“It was a mistake,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day.”

“Oh? Another hard day charging fifty pounds an hour for a chat and taking your poor husband’s credit card for walkies?”

If she knew how much I really charged an hour, she’d never sleep again.

“I don’t have a husband, Mum.”

“You’ve a stubborn streak a mile wide, Lexy. You were the same when you were a wee girl. Buying your own treats. Teaching yourself to read.”

“I sound like a nightmare,” I said. “Anyway, I’ll call back at a more civilised hour. Give Dad my love.”

“Is that it?” she said. “Half a minute when we haven’t heard from you for weeks?”

“Since Sunday.”

“Call that a phone call? That was even shorter than this one.”

“You cuddle down again and go back to sleep, Mum,” I said. “I’ll talk to you in the morning. Teatime, I mean.”

She snorted. “Putting it off already.”

“Or, here’s a thought: You call me.”

“In America?”

“Probably best if you want to catch me.”

“I can’t go calling America. There’s a special code you have to know and heaven knows how expensive it is.”

“So I’ll speak to you tomorrow morning my time. Teatime your time. Sleep tight. Sweet dreams.”

I put the phone down and stared at the bottle of wine. Or rather, at the wine bottle. Because it was empty.