“How well do you know Mrs. Hunter?”
He stiffened. “What do you mean by that?”
The sudden wary defensiveness in his voice prompted me to ask, “What do you think I mean, Doctor?”
“I don’t know her any better than I knew Jack.”
“Another casual acquaintance.”
“That’s right.” His mouth worked as if he were trying not to scowl. “Did Rich Twining say something to you about Sheila and me?”
“Such as what?”
“He did, didn’t he. Dammit, he’s the one with a lech for her. Did he tell you that?”
“He didn’t make any bones about it,” I said.
“He’s a liar if he told you he slept with her. She wouldn’t have anything to do with him and it offends his ego.”
I let that pass without comment.
Lukash said, “I’ll bet he didn’t mention Trevor Smith’s name.”
“Who would Trevor Smith be?”
“I thought not. He can’t stand the idea that Smith could succeed where he couldn’t.”
“You haven’t told me who Smith is.”
“The club pro at Emerald Hills.”
“Golf pro? The Greenwood Country Club?”
“Yes.”
“He and Mrs. Hunter are involved, is that what you’re saying? Had an affair or are still having one?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Lukash said priggishly. “I don’t tell tales, I’m not Rich Twining.”
“And you have nothing to hide.”
“Nothing whatsoever. My relations with Sheila Hunter have always been strictly aboveboard. I am not in the habit of playing around with tramps.”
“Tramps, Doctor? Is that what Mrs. Hunter is?”
Lukash clamped thin lips over his pretty white teeth. He’d said too much and was already starting to regret it. He glanced pointedly at his watch and then got to his feet, saying, “Your five minutes are up.” He looked at a spot past my left ear and added, “I’ll thank you not to bother me again. Or to repeat anything that has been discussed here. If you do—”
“I don’t carry tales, either. Doctor,” I said, and left him standing there looking pretty damn guilty for a man who had nothing to hide.
It was five-thirty by the time I got back into the city and up to my office. Tamara was long gone; Tuesday is generally one of her half days, because of classes at San Francisco State. On my desk was a note from her — computer printout, of course, since she never wrote anything by hand if she could help it. Child of the new age. Two phone messages, neither of any importance, and a cryptic one-liner that read: “Still working on the Hunter bg check but what I’ve got so far is VERY interesting.” The “VERY” was not only in large caps but one of those fancy curlicue typefaces computers can print up these days.
So what did this mean? Sheila Hunter was already a complex little enigma: uninterested in an easy fifty thousand dollars, terrified of something, as closed off as her late husband, possibly an unfaithful wife. More than that, too? The owner of some dark, VERY interesting secret tucked away in her and/or her late husband’s background?
I sighed. Tamara Corbin is an efficient young woman, but she has yet to lose her flair for the dramatic. When she does, and when she has a few more years of experience, she’ll make a twenty-first-century detective to put to shame a technophobic twentieth-century dinosaur like me. Most of the time the prospect pleases me; having a protégé with unlimited potential gives me a sense of accomplishment. Occasionally, though, considering her intelligence, ambition, organizational and computer skills, and indispensability after only two years of part-time effort, I wonder if maybe the real protégé in the agency is its founder. And then I just feel old.
There was one message on the answering machine, which Tamara had switched on before leaving; also not important. Other messages might well be waiting on e-mail, along with whatever Tamara’s background check on the Hunters had uncovered, but since I didn’t know and refused to be taught how to access anything on the new office computer, I’d have to wait for tomorrow. Old, yes. And stubborn and outmoded, with a crazybone for a head.
I locked up again and took my hidebound hide home to the one other woman on the planet besides Tamara with the patience to put up with me — and the only one with the understanding, compassion, courage, and sheer masochism to marry me and let me share her bed.
Kerry said, “We need to talk.”
Uh-oh, I thought. I had been home exactly twelve seconds, just enough time for her to give me a quick kiss and me to give Shameless a quick pat. Home being her condo on Diamond Heights, where we spent most of our time together — to the point where I was actually thinking of giving up my Pacific Heights flat, even though it was rent-controlled and I’d had it for nearly thirty years. Sentimentality only goes so far, even with me. Simple fact was, the flat was no longer home to me and the condo was.
I straightened as the cat continued to wind himself around my legs, making his fluttery little motorboat noise. “Talk about what?”
“Cybil. I spoke to her a little while ago.”
“She all right?”
“She says she is. I don’t think so.”
“Not some kind of health problem?”
“No, thank God.”
“Trouble with her new novel?”
“Not that, either. Something’s going on over there.”
Cybil was Kerry’s eighty-year-old mother. “Over there” was Redwood Village, a seniors’ complex in Marin County where Cybil had lived the past two years. In the forties and fifties she’d been a successful writer for the pulp magazines, mainly of stories about a hard-boiled detective named Samuel Leatherman. She had abandoned fiction writing when the pulps folded, and taken it up again after a forty-year hiatus when she moved to Redwood Village. You’d think she might have lost some of her skills after such a long layoff, but not if you knew Cybil. She had not only written her first novel and sold it to one of the smaller New York publishers, she’d been given a contract for a sequel.
I said, “What do you mean, going on?”
“At Redwood Village.”
“You mean with the staff? One of her neighbors?”
“I’m not sure. But it might be serious.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I think she wants to hire you to investigate whatever it is.”
“What? Oh, come on—”
“I’m not kidding. She didn’t come right out and say so, but she hinted around about it.”
“Didn’t she give you any idea of what it is?”
“Just that it has something to do with Archie Todd. You remember him, the retired ferryboat captain who lived across from her.”
We were in the kitchen now, procuring a beer for me and a glass of wine for Kerry. I took a long swig of Bud Light before I said, “What about Captain Archie?”
“He died suddenly last week. I got the impression Cybil believes it may not have been of natural causes.”
“Suicide?”
“Or homicide.”
I had another long pull. “In a place like Redwood Village? Who would want to kill a nice old bird like Captain Archie?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“How did he die?”
“She didn’t say. She wants us to come to lunch on Saturday and she’ll talk to us about it then.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said we’d come. I thought you’d be as curious as I am.”
“Sure, curious. But if she actually does want to hire me... My God, she’s got me confused with Samuel Leatherman.”
“You can listen to what she has to say, can’t you? It’s not like you’re under any obligation to her.”
“I didn’t mean I wouldn’t listen. I only meant—”