She touched her car door handle, preparing to exit, then stopped, as something moved in her rearview mirror.
She sure takes short walks, Kat thought, fear for Ray rising up in her. He was about to get busted in the worst way, by a frustrated, drooling big animal. She jumped out of the car and approached the woman, even reaching out to pet the scary guy who stood calmly by her side. She, who knew nothing about dogs, learned a lot in the next few minutes. When she couldn’t think of another thing to say, the woman said good-bye and approached her house.
Come out, come out wherever you are! Ray! Kat shouted in her mind, but stood indecisively beside her car, wondering what else to do.
The fruit cellar was creepy, even with the square of light above that led back to the kitchen and the day. Ray began to feel claustrophobic, and his movements got larger. He knocked jars off their shelves. Something splattered on the ground and a sickly-sweet fruit smell came up. He ran his hand high along the right wall. Nothing. Kneeling, he flashed the light along the webs and detritus of fifty years of winters and springs.
And there he found it, a filthy zipped vinyl bank envelope, lying against the wall under the lowest shelf, right on the ground. He recognized it instantly, even in this light. His mother had kept her papers in it. He seemed to remember her looking through it for some money to give him one morning when he was late for school, pulling it out of her underwear drawer.
She had put it down here for a reason. He held it, the flashlight trembling so that moving shadows were cast over the walls.
He heard a faint bang up there and his heart fluttered. Pushing the envelope into his pants pocket, he waited in the dark, cursing his stupidity in not shutting the trapdoor when he went down, just to have a little light.
Then he heard growling, then the most horrendous, cavernous barking and scrabbling of feet above his head.
The light through the trapdoor was cut off. “Who’s down there?” a woman’s voice demanded, muffled through the floor, and spiked by shrieks from her mad dog. He should have said something, “Utility man,” anything, but his tongue wouldn’t operate.
The trapdoor was pushed over the hole. He barely breathed in the blackness, but the sounds above were incoherent as bedlam.
He could guess what she was doing. He didn’t have much time. He climbed up the ladder and tried to push up on it, but she seemed to be sitting on it. It didn’t budge.
“Ma’am, please let me out,” he said. “Please hold back your dog. I’m with the water company.”
“The hell you are,” came her muffled voice. “Tell it to 911.” The dog, maddened by their interaction, howled afresh.
“Hush, Kobe,” the woman said. “You hush.”
Amazingly, the dog obeyed.
Well-trained. Not good, Ray thought. “Your neighbor called. A water main broke. You have severe flooding down here.” Then he switched to being a gas man, crying out, “Ma’am, listen. We have to evacuate right away. There’s going to be an explosion!” He pounded upward on the trapdoor, and he wasn’t playacting the terror in his voice. To be found like this-he would be put in jail! Or eaten alive by that monstrous animal.
No answer at first. Then the door opened a crack.
“Ma’am, please let me out. It’s dangerous.”
“Show me your badge.”
“I don’t have a badge!”
“Well, you better have something, or you’re not-” With a titanic effort he gave the trapdoor a sharp push upward. It fell away and he saw brown legs in rubber flip-flops recede. He burst out into the kitchen and landed in a crouch. The woman stood in the corner by the stove holding a butcher knife. “Don’t come near me!” she screeched. “ Kobe, get him!” The dog racing after him, Ray turned and ran for the front door.
Once outside, he ran across the lawn toward the street, wishing he had parked closer, aware that he could not outrun the hellhound who wanted him dead.
A green Echo cruised up, window down. “Get in!” The side door flew open.
He jumped in and Kat floored it. The dog hurtled up the street behind them, barking, until he finally couldn’t keep up and dropped behind.
“You stink,” Kat said, cornering onto the boulevard with one light hand. “No offense.”
Ray looked at himself. His pant leg was covered in a slimy goo. Jelly from an eon ago, most likely.
“Oh my God,” he said. “Thank you, Kat.” He breathed hard for a few minutes, the most elegantly dressed burglar she had ever seen.
“Wait. Stop,” he said finally.
She parked in a liquor store parking lot on Whittier Boulevard and folded her arms.
“I have to go back and get my car.”
He had stashed it by the library and walked to the house. By then, Kat, intrigued, didn’t want him to know she had been following him. She had kept her distance. “I want to know if you hurt anybody at that house.”
“No. I swear.”
“Did you steal anything?”
“No.”
“Why were you there?”
“Why are you spying on me?”
“Listen, you-you know what? I’m taking you right back to Bright Street. I never should have done this.” She kicked the little car up to speed and made a hard right out of the lot.
“No, please don’t.” The look on his face showed real terror. “Just take me to my car. I promise I’ll answer all of your questions.”
“When?”
“Just not right now. I have a big meeting at work. I’ll lose my business if I don’t make it.” As if preparing for it, he worked a handkerchief over the jelly on his trousers. Kat drove up behind his Porsche and gave him a business card.
“Pick me up at that address at nine-thirty,” she said. “I’m working late to make up for this.”
“Jacki, pick up the phone. It’s me. Jacki?”
No answer. Driving back on the Santa Monica freeway, Kat hung up without leaving a message. She needed Jacki to help interpret the peculiar events of the day so naturally, Jacki, always there when you didn’t need her, wasn’t there, or wasn’t answering.
She called again. “Where are you?” she asked Jacki’s voicemail. She didn’t like the plaintive tone of her voice but out it came. “Jacki, I need you to call me right away.”
Where could she be? Jacki always kept her cell phone one inch from her ear. Kat called Raoul’s cell phone, but he didn’t answer. Then she called Raoul at UCLA.
Raoul’s assistant answered. “Can I help you?” asked a calm voice.
“I need to speak with Raoul urgently. It’s his sister-in-law, Kat,” she added, just in case he had what Kat’s boss called a jiggle list, a list where some people got through and some remained forever banned from access. Family generally made the cut, although not always. Everyone had an uncle Gerald, someone you never, ever wanted to speak with.
“Raoul’s out,” the voice said automatically. Then, “You’re his wife’s sister?”
Under the circumstances, the frightening change of the voice on the other end of the phone from calm to solicitous, made Kat want to waffle. “Yes,” she finally admitted.
“She’s at the UCLA Medical Center.”
“She’s having her baby?”
“I don’t know about that. They took her in an ambulance.”
Ambulance? Weren’t those big white vehicles repositories of urgently sick people who might not make it? Didn’t they screech up the street, awakening babies and dogs and making people grind their teeth? “Why?”
“I’m afraid there’s been an accident. She got hit by a car.”
A tap, tap, tap at his office door interrupted Ray. He had rolled in about three-thirty in the afternoon, entirely missing the Antoniou deadline, missing the meeting.
“Come in.”
“Here at last. Praise God,” said Denise. “However.”
“Hi, Denise.” The good news was, she was still willing to talk to him.