cover of Death in the Ditch.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Lindsey, you know me. I hand-picked you out of that crummy little office you were in. I gave you your big break in this company. You know I don’t kid.”
“Right. Okay. Who’s the girl on the cover of Death in the Ditch?”
“I have not the foggiest. That’s what International Surety is paying you to find out.”
“Sounds like a book. I mean—the girl on the cover. Kind of like that porn star who posed for the baby food label or the soap flakes package or whatever it was. But Death in the Ditch wouldn’t be baby food or soap. It sounds like a book.”
“Find out, Lindsey. And find the girl. We owe her three million dollars.”
“Whoa. I thought you said four million.”
“Right. I told you this was a flag policy. If we find the girl and pay the benefits, International Surety gets a twenty-five percent finder’s fee. That’s a cool million smackers.”
“And if we don’t find her? I mean, this sounds like a long shot. When did you say the policy was written?”
“1951.”
“After more than forty years, well, she may not even be alive. What happens if we can’t find her? Or if she’s deceased?”
“Then, Hobart, then.… I told you this was a flag policy. If we can’t find her, or if she’s deceased, the money goes to something called the World Fund for Indigent Artists. Sounds like Vansittart was hung up on artists and models. Wouldn’t be the first.”
“And you want me to find the girl.”
“Find the girl, right. Cherchez la femme.”
“How long do we have to find her?”
“Policy doesn’t specify. But we have to notify the artists’ fund, and once they smell four million bucks, they’re going to start pressing us hard.”
“And there’s no finder’s fee.”
“That’s right, Lindsey. I swear, young feller, you keep on showing your smarts like you been, you’ve got a bright future with this company.”
“I’ll get on it first thing Monday morning, Mr. Richelieu.”
A moment later Lindsey could have sworn that he felt a blast of heat come through the telephone line. Of course that was impossible, but.… “You’ll get on it first thing tomorrow, bucko. In fact suppose you get on it tonight. You’ve got your palmtop with you?”
“I have it.”
“It’s got a modem in it, right? Standard SPUDS issue, right? You do work for me, Lindsey, don’t you?”
“Right.”
“To work, then. You’re not on an hourly wage, Lindsey. To work.”
Lindsey opened the bathroom door. He could see Jamie and Hakeem silhouetted against the TV screen. They’d lost interest in CNN and switched channels to a Japanese monster movie. Something with two heads and lots of scales was breathing fire and flailing at a squadron of Korean War era jet fighters.
After a couple of jets crashed into a mountainside sending up plumes of black, oily smoke Lindsey quietly placed the telephone handset on its base. The boys did not budge. He pulled on his goose-down jacket and motioned to Marvia. She slipped into her own jacket and followed him onto the wooden walkway outside their room.
The lodge was separated from the lake by a broad lawn, covered now with drifted snow. The January moon reflected off the lake’s smooth surface. The Coast Guard cutter had apparently returned to its pier and the news helicopter to its base. Across the lake, a torchlight ski-party was visible as a cluster of tiny moving sparks.
Lindsey took Marvia’s hands in his own.
She said, “We have to go back, don’t we?”
He nodded.
“It was going so well. Like a real family.”
“I know. But Richelieu—”
She looked angry. “How did he know where we were?”
Lindsey laughed without humor. “I guess he was watching CNN.” He told Marvia about Richelieu and Mrs. Blomquist working late and just happening to turn on a TV in the office. “He must have had her calling every hotel and lodge at the lake, ’til she found us.”
Marvia grinned bitterly. “We should have registered as the Smith family.”
Lindsey looked down at Marvia’s face. The moon reflected from her dark eyes like two bright disks. Her dark face and short hair were silhouetted against the snow-field that stretched from the lodge to the lake shore.
“Let’s chase the boys into their own room. I can log onto the twenty-four-hour interlibrary net from my palmtop. Give me an hour or so, then we’ll can turn in.”
Plum pressed the palm of her hand to his face. Cold as the night air was, her hand felt warm on his cheek.
“You going to work until you fall asleep?”
Lindsey shook his head. She could always make him smile. He shook his head again to make sure she could see it in the moonlight.
CHAPTER TWO
Lindsey and Marvia Plum took Jamie and Hakeem to an old Tahoe restaurant for breakfast. It wasn’t glitzy and it wasn’t full of yuppies in the latest L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer ski-wear but the food was good and the portions were generous.
The boys were not pleased at missing their weekend in the snow, but Lindsey and Plum promised them another shot at it as soon as they could get away. Normally Lindsey was the one who worked Monday through Friday. Since he’d moved from International Surety’s Walnut Creek office to SPUDS, he pretty well set his own days and hours.
Marvia Plum was the one who had to fight for the shifts she wanted. A homicide sergeant on the Berkeley Police Department had to be available when the department needed her. Murderers didn’t knock off after six o’clock in the evening. In fact, they got busy after the sun went down, and peaked just about when most citizens were watching the evening news or crawling into their beds.
But this time it was Lindsey who had got the call, and this time it was Lindsey who clicked his heels, saluted smartly and did as he was commanded: Find the girl on the cover of Death in the Ditch.
He dropped Marvia and both youngsters at her house. She would take care of them, get Hakeem White back to his parents and take her own son to her parents’ house. They would spend the evening there. Marvia spent more time with her mother since her father’s death. Not that Gloria Plum needed it. She had always been an island unto herself. But somehow, it seemed to Lindsey, Marvia drew strength from being in the house where she was raised, and where her father had lived almost until the end.
Lindsey left them at Oxford Street in Berkeley. Marvia would drive
