clocked me a slap across the head. It was half-assed for him, but it brought those constellations right back for me.
“Let it go, Al. Our bright boy here has lots to think about.”
I heard those three beeps again and the door shut. I opened my eyes. I heard an engine rev and jumped up, leaned over the back of the couch, parted the Venetians and saw brake lights on a beat-up old Datsun. I copped the license plate number and flopped down on the couch.
Home sweet home, sweet solitude, just me and fifty old ladies screaming bloody murder inside my head.
6
I woke with my head pounding and venom in my veins. I was pissed. I was hired for an impossible job, I was making a damn good effort regardless, and yet I was being subjected to dead bodies and getting battered around and no one was telling me why. I wanted some answers, one way or another, even if I did decide to make the smart move and keep the twenty-five grand and get off the case.
I considered cracking open every phone in the house to see if they really were tapped, but the line could be tapped at another junction. Anyway, if someone wanted to hear what I was saying, it made more sense to simply not be worth hearing. How long before someone else banged on my door in the middle of the night? Better to play it cool. Whether or not that hinky letter was really from Ashley, I needed to be careful.
I hopped in the shower, careful not to catch my reflection in the mirror. The hot water stung my face and I held a cloth to my eye and bathed with one hand. I got out and went to the kitchen for ice and held it to my brow while I called my bank.
McCaffrey’s check had cleared.
I was so ecstatic I called the Starbucks at the truck stop and offered the pimply faced kid a twenty to deliver me a Venti Vanilla Latte and spent the next two hours working the phone, Ashley or no Ashley, banal call after banal call. I called Pac Bell, the electric company, the gas company, and the water company, and paid all my overdue balances. Then I called my maxed-out credit card companies and paid them all off too. I was in the black and it felt pretty good.
But I was still pissed, so I went down to the range.
Charlie was a little surprised to see me. “Back again so soon?”
“I told you, it’s been a weird week.”
She darted a look at my shiner. “What’s catching your eye today?” She grinned.
“Cute. Lemme try that nine mil again.”
“Thought you said it was too much like a toy.”
“Yeah, but it’s starting to grow on me.”
I popped off a few and my breathing leveled out. By the time I walked out and started Delores, I had made up my mind.
* * *
I went back to the Dalton Gallery; I had to take a look.
There were a couple of cop cars parked outside, and the gallery had a sign out front saying that the show had ended early. Some cops were on their way out, but artists and buyers were milling in and out unmolested. I slipped in. Dalton’s office was roped off with bright yellow crime scene tape but his body was nowhere to be seen. Not that I would have seen it anyway. Dalton’s previously immaculate office was torn to pieces—the file cabinets were emptied and overturned, the desk was on its side, even the framed and glassed-in prints hanging on the wall were smashed. It looked like a hurricane had hit the tiny isolated spot, wreaked its havoc, and escaped out the window. Someone had come back; nothing had been askew when I found Dalton’s body other than the chair he’d been sitting in.
I heard a familiar slimy voice down the hall and took a couple steps into the gallery. The lean lizard son of a bitch from the night before was smoothly arguing with a pale blond woman as he bent down over a canvas, slitting it off the stretcher bar with a penknife.
“You can’t—you can’t!” she protested, and he answered her, as calm as can be, “I bought it, didn’t I? It’s mine. I can do what I want.” It was Ashley’s portrait of me. I ducked out before he caught sight of me.
I was almost out the door when I saw something I’d missed before—a gallery guide of the current exhibition. I slipped it into my pocket.
Serena was sitting on the curb, half a block away, crying her eyes out. I sat down next to her and she didn’t complain.
“Serena,” I said cautiously, “how are you holding up?”
She looked up at me with barren, tear-streaked, beautiful green eyes. “How did you—oh.” She recognized me. I was almost hoping she wouldn’t. “You were here yesterday.”
“That’s right.” I let her soak that in for a minute. She seemed to be composing herself a bit. “What happened?”
“They killed him!” This came out like projectile vomiting and preceded another torrent of tears and sobs. I put an arm across her shoulder and she melted into me, quaking and quivering.
As she collected herself I tried another approach. “Serena, I know this is hard, but I need you to tell me what happened yesterday.”
“Are you a cop?” Again, those brilliantly sheened green eyes. “I told the cops already.”
“I’m not a cop. Just a friend of Mr. Dalton’s.”
“I . . . my boyfriend was in town from Fresno, and I wanted to see him, just for five minutes, coz I haven’t seen him in a month and he just drove in and I wasn’t off work yet, so Mr. Dalton let me go.”
“Right, I remember.”
“But when I came back, this guy was locking the front door. He said Mr. Dalton had to leave, and he was locking up for him—he said he was a business associate. I—I didn’t think . . . I was just so happy to leave and see my boyfriend.”
“What did this guy look like? Medium height, dark, sharkskin suit?”
“Yeah. You saw him?”
“Only for a minute. What else?”
“That’s all. I just . . . It’s all my fault!” More waterworks, more holding the shivering bird.
“It’s not your fault, Serena. You couldn’t have done anything. If you had stayed, you’d probably be dead too. It’s okay.” I held her a minute more and she seemed to calm down for good. “Is your boyfriend still in town?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Go see him. You’ll be fine. Want me to call you a cab?”
“No . . . it’s close.”
Something came to me. “You still have a job, right?”
“Mr. Dalton’s sister is taking over. She said we’ll reopen in a week or so.”
“That blond woman inside?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Thank you, Serena.”
