‘That would be helpful.’
‘You want to hold, I can do it right now.’
He came back in about a minute, saying that the restaurant still had the reservation records and it had been Thursday.
There was no way to make this next question sound innocuous, but if the answer was yes, it would save Glitsky a lot of footwork. ‘Mr Farris, is there staff at the place where you stay in Taos?’
You didn’t have to draw a map. He didn’t answer right away. Glitsky heard him take a breath on either side of the recording beep.
‘Owen Nash was my best friend, Sergeant. I don’t benefit in any conceivable way from his death. To the contrary. I’m personally devastated and professionally handicapped in ways you can’t imagine by Owen’s death. I’m sure there’s a substantial paper record of my comings and goings that weekend and if you decide it’s your duty to look into it, you go right ahead… If I were you, Sergeant, I’d first spend some time on this judge. But that’s up to you. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a full load here.’
The connection went dead in Glitsky’s hand. He tapped his pencil on his blotter. Farris’s reaction was not unusual – folks were generally unappreciative when told they were under suspicion. But, Glitsky couldn’t help but notice, he didn’t say that anybody had seen him in Taos or anywhere else. Could be an oversight, like Thursday or Friday or whatever day it had been when he’d last laid eyes on his best friend. Could be.
It was the kind of thing, though, that Glitsky thought he’d remember.
The nap helped a little, but not much.
After the three black-and-tans in the morning, Hardy and Frannie and Rebecca had shared some outstanding gambas at Sol y Luna. Also, because Frannie wasn’t drinking at all, he’d had a bottle of a light white Rioja. Hell, he was celebrating.
He’d broken the news about his job and she took it in very much the same vein as he had himself. They had most of a quarter million dollars in the bank, the profit check on Hardy’s percentage of the Shamrock was coming in this week – money wasn’t the biggest problem in the world, and she didn’t like what practicing law had been doing to him.
Which called for a little Fundador after lunch.
Frannie drove home and Hardy got his shirt off before he crashed to sleep, waking up to Rebecca’s wails and a thundering head. He walked into the back room and picked up the baby, patting her gently, holding her against him. She tried to fasten herself onto his nipple and cried all the more at the lack of result. Frannie was coming through the kitchen.
‘We’re really having another one of these baby things?’ he said.
‘She didn’t have the lunch you did.’
‘She doesn’t have the head I’ve got either.’ He held Rebecca in front of his face. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know for a fact I feel worse than you, and I’m not crying.’
The logic didn’t have any effect. He handed her off to her mother and in seconds she was suckling.
That’s an excellent trick,‘ Hardy said. He was changing into his running clothes, his green jogging suit next up in the drawer. ’You mind if I run a little of this off?‘
He took the four-mile circular route out to the beach, along the hard sand south to Lincoln. The air was clear, the temperature was in the low seventies and got a little nippier with the wind off the breakers.
Here he was, unemployed during a major depression, and he smiled as he ran, the headache gone in the first twenty minutes. Down the beach, back along the park, up the Avenues, to his home.
He was sitting on his porch, cooling down, the sun still up but hidden now behind the buildings across the street. On the back-half of his run he had decided that, with his calendar suddenly free, the Hardy family should book a flight to Hawaii and disappear for a couple of weeks. He was daydreaming about some serious beach time, rum drinks, Jimmy Buffett riffs on a balmy breeze.
From Hardy’s porch the six-story apartment buildings on either side blocked his vision both up and down the street, so there was no warning when Celine Nash appeared on the other side of his picket fence – stone-washed jeans, sandals, magenta silk blouse.
He might have expected something like this to happen – perhaps he should have called her, Farris, even Glitsky with the news of his termination. Was she coming to offer her condolences, ask what happened, get news about who would now be handling the case? How did she get his address?
He stood up, deciding he was going to change his phone number and have it unlisted. Get his address out of the new book. He should have done it – he now realized -when he had been re-hired at the district attorney’s office last February, but with the new marriage, new job, new baby, other things had filled his mind.
He took a couple of steps off the porch. Celine saw him and stopped in her tracks.
He came down toward her and he realized her face was frozen. Had something else happened? She stood stock-still, as though in shock.
‘Celine, are you all right?’
He took a few more steps toward her, stopping just before the gate. There was a long moment. She stared at him with a look that seemed to combine horror and loss.
Hardy heard the front door open, heard Frannie say, ‘Diz?’
Celine’s eyes went behind him, to Frannie, fastened back, first it seemed hopefully, then almost in panic, on him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, starting to back away, ‘I’m sorry. This is a mistake.’
‘Celine. What’s the matter?’
She shook her head, looking him up and down. Everything between him and Celine had always been too personal. Now, seeing his house and his wife, she couldn’t ignore the reality. Not only was he a good man, he had a life that didn’t include her on any level. She backed further away, then stopped and seemed to regain some control.
‘I’m sorry, Dismas. I don’t know what I was thinking.’
‘It’s all right. What is it?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. It’s a mistake.’ She was backing away again, turning. She lifted a hand, a diffident wave, and walked away.
‘Who was that?’ Frannie was up next to him, arm in his.
‘Celine Nash. Owen Nash’s daughter.’
‘God, she’s beautiful, isn’t she?’
Hardy tightened his arm around her. ‘You’re beautiful.’
She bumped her hip against him. ‘What did she want?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe she heard I got dumped.’
She was getting in her car, parked halfway down the street. They both watched her.
‘So why didn’t she stay?’
‘She’s been sort of unstable since the loss of her father.’ They were going back to the porch. He told Frannie about Celine’s explosion at him the other day, her mood swings. He neglected to mention the after-hours meeting at Hardbodies!
‘I know after Eddie I was a bat case.’
Hardy tightened his hand around her waist. ‘You were a mensch,’ Hardy said. ‘She’s not holding up so well.’
‘You shouldn’t be too hard on her.’
Hardy kissed his wife. ‘I’m not going to be anything on her. I’m fired, remember? All that’s over.’
PART IV
38
Hardy did take Frannie and Rebecca to Hawaii, where they stayed for two weeks.
In San Francisco the Owen Nash case fell out of the headlines. During August and September there was no outward sign of activity, although Peter Struler (not Abe Glitsky) kept himself very busy on the case that Elizabeth Pullios didn’t want to close; the police department, and Abe, had moved along to other, more pressing crimes.
Now it had been over three months since Hardy had been fired, and Struler and Pullios had put together their case. When they did finally move, they moved very quickly.
The sealed indictment was passed down by the grand jury on the morning of Tuesday, October 13. Superior Court Judge Marian Braun read the indictment and decreed that there would be no bail on the bench warrant. In an unusual move, the warrant itself was hand-delivered by the district attorney himself, Christopher Locke, accompanied by assistant D.A. Elizabeth Pullios and Police Chief Dan Rigby, to Lieutenant Frank Batiste of the Homicide Division at 11:45 A.M. Reading it, Batiste sucked in a breath.