“Me, too,” Lyle said. “My wife’s got a pot roast in the oven. There’s no point in all of us hanging around anymore. The man we were trying to catch was probably studying the house. When we tipped our hand too soon because of…” He gestured toward Coltrane.
“Yeah.” Walt sounded disgusted. “The creep’s long gone by now. We started our surveillance in the middle of the night, presumably before he started his own surveillance.” Weariness strained his face. “But now that he knows we were waiting for him, we’ll have a hard time setting another trap. The good news is, tonight will probably be quiet. You guys go ahead. Enjoy what’s left of your New Year’s. I’ll hold down the fort.”
“No, that’s all right,” Tash said. “You go ahead, too.”
“But…”
“As you said, tonight will probably be quiet. Cross fingers that whoever it is left the area for now. The sheriff’s department has more people to protect than just me.”
“But not all of them need protecting,” Walt said. “I don’t feel comfortable leaving you alone.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Tash said. “I won’t be alone, though.”
Walt looked puzzled.
“Mr. Coltrane is going to stay for a while. We’re going to discuss real estate.”
Coltrane must have looked surprised.
“If that’s convenient,” Tash said to him. “Perhaps you have somewhere else you need to be. I just thought that since you came all this way to talk to me…”
“No,” Coltrane said. “No, there’s nowhere else I have to be.”
8
THE TIME WAS JUST AFTER FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON, the air turning from crimson to gray, the breeze increasing, becoming cooler as the men stepped outside the front door and put on their sneakers. Tash opened the twin garage doors, revealing two large four-wheel-drive vehicles, an Explorer and a Mountaineer. As some of the men got into them, Tash eased into her Porsche and backed it out of the driveway, allowing the Mountaineer that she had been blocking to get out of the garage. The moment the stall was free, she pulled into it.
Coltrane couldn’t help noticing that for the brief time she was away, the men who hadn’t yet gotten into the vehicles stopped talking and watched her.
“Remember, if you have even the slightest hint of trouble, don’t think twice – call us,” Lyle told her.
“Don’t worry. I’m a coward at heart. When I’m by myself, I don’t go anywhere without carrying the phone.”
Coltrane frowned. “Phone? But I thought it was out of service.”
“It is,” Walt said. “We’re talking about a cellular phone I bought for Tash and had activated in my name. Whoever this creep is, he keeps managing to find out the new numbers she gets in her name. But so far, he doesn’t know anything about this number.”
“Good idea,” Coltrane said.
“Let’s hope it stays a good idea. Tash, if you need anything, let me know.”
She touched his arm in a gesture of thanks.
“While you guys are still here…” Coltrane said.
They looked at him, wondering what he was leading up to.
“Can you wait another few minutes while I get my car? I don’t want to stumble around looking for it after dark. This way, Tash won’t be alone while I’m gone.”
“Yeah, I can stick around a little longer,” Lyle said.
“And I’ll make it quicker by driving you to your car.” Nolan motioned for Coltrane to follow him to the garage and the Explorer that remained in the stall next to Tash’s Porsche.
One of the policemen was in the passenger seat. Another policeman and one of the state troopers was in the back. While Nolan got behind the steering wheel, Coltrane climbed into the back. He saw Walt and Lyle talking to Tash in front of the house while Nolan left the garage, reached the road, and drove away.
“Our cars are parked behind a service station on the highway,” the policeman in the front seat explained. “That way, it didn’t look like we were having a convention at Tash’s place while we were waiting for him to show up.”
“You set it up well.”
“Too bad the wrong guy showed up.”
Uncomfortable, Coltrane changed the subject. “I’m on a street on that bluff.”
“You certainly had yourself lost,” Nolan said.
By the time Coltrane got back, it was dark. Lights glowed warmly in the house. The officers in the Mountaineer had gotten out and joined Walt and Lyle, speaking with Tash in her front hallway.
Tash smiled at Coltrane in welcome.
“Just as a precaution,” Lyle told him, “better put your car in the garage, where nothing will happen to it.”
“Right.”
Then Walt, Lyle, and the others said good-bye and drove away. As the gleam of taillights receded, the road became dark except for the pinpoints of lights in a house farther along.
Finally Coltrane and Tash were alone.
9
SHE BROKE THE SILENCE. “Would you like another beer?”
“Sounds good.” Coltrane had all kinds of questions, but he didn’t want to overwhelm her. Take it slow and easy, he thought.
She locked the front door, then opened the inside garage door and pressed a button that closed each stall. After that, she secured the inside garage door, too.
“Before I get you that beer, would you help me walk the picket line? You know, check the security?”
“Officer Coltrane reporting for duty.” He hoped it sounded like a joke, which apparently it did, because she looked amused as she started down the hallway.
“Carl and the others already locked up, but I feel more comfortable if I double-check,” she said. Past the stairway, they entered the living room and crossed to the sliding glass doors that led onto the deck. There, Tash tried to open the door. “Definitely secure.”
Pensive, she looked out past the white deck toward the darkness on the rocks and the whitecaps on the waves in the black ocean. “I used to love sitting out there, even when it’s cold like this, watching the waves hit the shore, listening to them. Sometimes I can see a freighter on the horizon, its lights moving, heading to mysterious places. ‘So we beat on, boats against the current… ’”
“‘… borne back ceaselessly into the past.’”
She turned to him, surprised. “You know Gatsby?”
Coltrane shrugged. “When I was at USC, one of my photography instructors insisted I take a few literature classes. For some reason, The Great Gatsby really stayed with me, that final image. Randolph Packard had an image like that in one of his photographs. The lights of a freighter on the horizon.”
“Heading to mysterious places,” Tash echoed. She had sounded melancholy, but now she mocked herself. “Probably only to Long Beach. Anyway, for a while, those nights are over.”
She pressed a button on the wall to the right. A faint rumble puzzled Coltrane until he saw metal shutters descending, blocking off the all-glass wall at the back of the living room.
“It makes me feel like I’m in a castle,” Tash said, “except I’m lowering the shutters instead of raising the drawbridge.”
Coltrane followed her into the kitchen, where she turned on an overhead light that reflected off white countertops, creating a pleasant luster. After confirming that a side door was locked, she leaned against a counter, stared down, shook her head, then roused herself. “Almost forgot that beer.”
There were several in the refrigerator. Presumably for the men helping her, Coltrane thought.
“Don’t bother about a glass. The can is fine,” he said.
“You sure?” She poured Chablis into a glass and touched it against the beer can she had given him. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
“It doesn’t seem much like New Year’s, does it?”
“I have a friend who keeps emphasizing that it’s a matter of attitude,” Coltrane said, “that we should think of it as a chance for a new beginning.”