The dogs slept like dogs.
It was a pretty damn good Thanksgiving.
Lauren and I cleaned up the kitchen together. I grabbed my pager off my hip a moment after I started the dishwasher and promptly excused myself to make a couple of phone calls. Five minutes later I tracked Lauren down at the pool table in time to watch her rerack the balls and begin to fondle the white cue ball in a way that made me just the slightest bit jealous.
I said, “Our guests are gone?”
She nodded. “Jonas was approaching a cliff at high speed. We thought he should have a mattress under him when he went over it.”
I pointed at my pager and said, “Emergency, unfortunately. I have to go into the office for a couple of hours.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yeah?”
I said, “Yeah.”
She didn’t believe me.
She leaned over the table and with a single powerful stroke turned the triangle of pool balls into a physics lesson in vectors.
I didn’t make the third phone call, the crucial phone call, until I was in my car on the way downtown to my office.
“Jim? Alan Gregory.”
“Alan. This is a surprise.”
“Are you out somewhere, Jim? Am I disturbing your dinner?” The truth was that I didn’t really care whether I was intruding, but feigning politeness was called for, and I was feigning politeness.
“I’m with some friends. We just finished. What’s up?”
“It’s about the problem with… your client’s secrets. I have some information that you should know.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m not comfortable going into it on the phone. Could you drop by my office later on? Maybe five o’clock?”
“On Thanksgiving? This is necessary?”
“I think you should know what’s going on. Some of what I want to talk with you about other people already know, so I’d like to bring you up to speed as soon as possible in case some of it becomes public, Jim.”
“Really. Five o’clock?”
“I’m heading into the office now, and I have an emergency-something with another patient-that I need to take care of first. She and I should be done by five at the latest.”
“See you then,” he said.
When I arrived in downtown Boulder, I detoured into the parking lot of one of the banks on Walnut near Fourteenth and withdrew the maximum amount that was permitted from an ATM. My plan required cash. Quite a bit of it, actually.
A few blocks farther west I pulled down the driveway of the building that held my office. She was waiting for me on the steps that led up to the French doors at the rear of the building.
“You got the money?”
I flashed the thick pile of twenties.
“Let’s go, then, get this done. They’re holding dessert until I get back. My sister makes a sweet potato pie that…”
Tayisha’s words just faded into the night.
“Shouldn’t take long?” I asked.
“Nope.” She smiled at me in a way that made her sparkling white teeth jump out of the darkness. “My boss never hears about this, right?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Then we’re on. Where’s my baby?”
SIXTY
Only one other house on Holly Malone’s block seemed to be having people over for the holiday celebration. As far as Thanksgiving was concerned, this was a neighborhood of guests, not hosts.
Carmen and I took turns dozing off for the next couple of hours. On one of my turns awake I walked around the block, not so much because I expected to find anything going on as because everybody had been telling me that it was good for my heart to get my pulse up every once in a while.
I was beginning to suspect that Carmen was good for my heart, too, though the fact that she was sleeping right beside me in the car was distracting me in ways that left me uneasy. The minutes passed especially slowly as she napped, but it was okay. I spent a portion of the silent hours lost in a familiar cop reverie about evil, an evil that I felt was hovering over that South Bend neighborhood like a dark cloud in still winds.
Somewhere around six o’clock Carmen and I got confused about whose turn it was to nap. The second I opened my eyes I knew something didn’t feel exactly right. It took me longer than it should have taken to realize that she, too, was snoozing.
“Activity,” I said.
Carmen’s eyes popped open. “What, what?”
“Activity.”
The activity was the arrival of a minivan, an older Plymouth that had those tacky fake wood panels on the sides. It hadn’t been washed since water was invented. The minivan had parked right behind the little Lexus, so our view of the ensuing disembarkation was partially obscured. Still, I could tell that a small crowd was forming on the sidewalk.
“The other sister,” I said.
With some wonder in her voice, Carmen said, “My, she’s fertile. Look at the size of…”
I counted five kids congregating on the sidewalk, but anyone who was shorter than three feet or so in height probably remained invisible to me because of the angle and the intervening Lexus.
“Two adults?” I asked.
Carmen said, “Yes. One mom and one dad. One, two… five kids. Or six? What do you get?”
I counted again. “I get six. How old is Holly’s sister? She tell you that when you talked to her yesterday?”
“If this is the one I think, she’s five years older than Holly. Jeez, Sam, think-that poor woman has been pregnant almost every other day of her life since her eighteenth birthday.”
The members of Holly’s oldest sister’s brood were dressed like kids, in sharp distinction to Artie’s offspring, who were dressed as though they expected a relative to die during dinner and Artie wanted to be certain they were prepared to attend an immediate funeral.
The newly arrived posse broke ranks as they moved toward Holly’s front door. Running. Laughter. Teasing.
“Wait,” Carmen said. “I get three adults now.”
“Yep, me too. The blonde is Holly’s sister?”
“I guess,” Carmen replied. “Who’s the other one, then, the woman with the dark hair?”
I didn’t answer. Holly answered the door, and the passel of nieces and nephews funneled inside, followed by the blond woman and then the rotund brother-in-law with the big smile. Everybody got either a hug or a kiss or both. The woman with the dark hair stood patiently on that classic Craftsman-style porch holding a covered dish, waiting for her turn to arrive. Once her relatives were safely inside the house, Holly stepped out to speak with the woman. Holly’s head was tilted to one side the whole time.
After listening for about thirty seconds, Holly took the woman by the elbow and guided her farther from the door. They talked for another minute or so, their faces only a foot apart.
“A friend? Neighbor?” Carmen conjectured.
“Maybe.” I didn’t want to come to any conclusions at that point. I wanted to observe.
The covered dish finally changed hands, some final words were spoken, and the woman stepped down from the porch without a hug or kiss from Holly. She walked down the sidewalk away from the house, which was also away from me and Carmen. Holly hesitated a second at the door before she stepped back into the house. Had she looked our way before she went inside? I wasn’t sure.
I figured she figured I was close by.
I checked my cell phone to make sure it was on. It was.
“Want me to follow her?” Carmen asked.
She was talking about the covered dish lady. That didn’t surprise me. She was asking me what I wanted her to do. That did. “Don’t think so. You’re probably right. Just a neighbor.”
Carmen said, “I’m getting hungry. You?”
“Always. You think maybe we could get Holly to bring us a plate? Her turkey will come out of the oven soon. I bet they end up eating around seven, maybe a little after.”
She reached into her purse and offered me an energy bar. “You might get a plate, Sam. Not me.”