She shoveled in another mouthful of leaves. “I told the detective all of this.”
“Our departments work in parallel.”
“That seems less than efficient.”
It was, as was my entire line of questioning. I was circling toward the crux of the matter, trying not to stoke suspicion. “Mr. Vandervelde was something of a collector.”
That got a laugh. Bits of green showed in her teeth. It took the austere edge off her good looks, made her human and fallible. “One way to describe it.”
“Say he was going to buy or sell something of significant value. Would he discuss it with you?”
“I guess it depends on what. Not that he needed my permission.”
“A car.”
“You seem to have an idea of what you’re after.”
I took a chance. “The garage door was left open.”
“When?”
“It was like that when we responded to the call. I wondered if he had a meeting set up with a potential buyer or seller. Or he was showing the collection to someone. Do you recall him talking about anything like that?”
“No, I... no.”
She frowned, lost in troubled thoughts.
“He had a man who worked on the cars,” she said finally. “He used to come to the house.”
I remembered the bespoke mechanic’s station. “Used to.”
“Rory fired him. Months ago.”
“What’s this person’s name?”
“Sammy.”
“Last name?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I ever knew it.”
“Why did Mr. Vandervelde fire him?”
“He scratched one of the cars. Rory drives some of them more than others, so it’s part of the duties to take them out in rotation and keep the batteries charged. Rory noticed a scratch on the bumper — the Porsche, I think it was. Sammy panicked and denied it. He accused Rory of doing it and trying to blame him. He said Rory needed to get his eyes checked. Due to his age. You can imagine how well that went over.”
“Did it get acrimonious?”
“Well, I don’t think anyone came away happy.”
“Was there any physical violence?”
The question jolted her. “Of course not. You don’t think I would’ve told the detective that?”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I didn’t think of it at the time.” To avoid being labeled a person who didn’t think of things, she added, “Like I said, it happened months ago, and anyway, Rory’s fired hundreds of people over the years. He had two thousand employees at one point. Sometimes you have to let people go. It’s inevitable. He hired his current housekeeper because the old one loved Martha and was rude to me. She refused to make my bed.”
Her watch dinged. She tapped the screen. “I have to go.”
“One more question, please, Doctor. Had Mr. Vandervelde found a replacement?”
“For Sammy?”
I nodded.
“Not that I know of. I’m sure he meant to get around to it at some point. The cars are a lot of work. Rory wasn’t going to do it himself.”
I was reevaluating Luke’s browser history in light of what she’d told me.
Not just a casual visit. A job interview.
Would Luke leave a cushy start-up to become a glorified mechanic?
He might. No need to broach the subject with Andrea, though, not before he’d sat with Rory, talked it over, figured out for himself what he wanted. Same went for telling me or my parents or Scott. We’d criticize the move as a step down, the latest in a series of questionable choices.
Nancy Yap dabbed at her lips, getting ready to leave.
I said, “Did he ever mention the name Tom?”
“I don’t think so. Who is that? Is this connected to Sammy?”
“Not necessarily. What about Scott?” I said, grabbing more names out of the air, insulation to hide the real question. “Or James or Luke? Any of those ring a bell?”
“No.”
“What about these last names: Starks, Lamb, Edison.”
Her watch dinged again. She stood, tapping. “... no. Sorry, excuse me... ”
She hurried out, taking the juice and leaving me to clear her tray.
Chapter 20
Pleasant Valley State Prison lies off Interstate 5 in the Central Valley. The drive from the East Bay takes two and a half to three hours. My mother made it often, pressuring me to accompany her and occasionally succeeding.
Luke was always grateful to see me, but our conversations went nowhere. He had no life to speak of and I shared little of mine. Soon I stopped going altogether. Only as his sentence began drawing to a close did remorse rear up. On my final visit I brought Amy along. Our second date.
I thought about that as I left the hospital and set out for my meeting with Assistant Warden Gluck. How clumsy of me to ask her. How generous of her to accept.
I joined a caravan of big rigs shuttling along the spine of the state, through limitless tracts of dark fertile soil birthing avocados, almonds, citrus, garlic, grapes; crook-backed farmworkers in caps and facecloths, one hundred seventy miles of mounting dread.
I never made it.
I GOT AS far as Gilroy. The sky had eased to a matte brown and the temperature had rebounded forty degrees. At the 152 cloverleaf my fuel light came on. I exited for the first gas station. While I dipped my credit card, Evelyn Girgis called. She and James Okafor had pulled the security footage from outside Bay Area Therapetutics HQ.
“I need to warn you, the quality’s not great.”
“I’ll take whatever I can get. Thank you so much.”
I started the pump and headed into the convenience store to escape the heat, holing up by the refrigerator case.
The clip was about three and a half minutes long, time- and date-stamped the morning of May 11. There was no sound, and her caveat had led me to expect something grainy and stilted, but the image was vivid and in full color, bowed at the edges by a fish-eye lens. I saw the sidewalk in front of the building, the street, the storefronts opposite.
At 07:42:21 my brother arrived and swiped in.
At 07:42:58 a white single-cab truck nosed into the upper right corner of the frame and parked across the street. Glare bleached the interior. The angle rendered the tag illegible and made it impossible to tell if the bed had a tonneau cover.
At 07:43:40, Luke reemerged, having forgotten his lunch. He stopped short and stared briefly at the truck before walking offscreen to the left. The driver’s-side window went down and then a shape leaned into the open window frame, aiming a small object. A cameraphone.
I hit PAUSE.
Shadow split the man’s face. He was wearing dark glasses. Zooming in scrubbed away his features. But I could tell that he was white.
With a beard.
I studied the screen for a few minutes but could not identify him. I pressed PLAY.
At 7:44:51, the man in the truck retracted his arm.
Fifteen seconds later Luke returned carrying an insulated bag, his expression tense. He went inside.
I waited for the truck to drive away.
It didn’t.
The truck’s passenger door opened.
A second man got out.
He let a car go past, then stepped haltingly off the curb. The fish-eye caused him to distend monstrously, so that he seemed to be forcing his way through the tissue of time and space.
He took a step toward the building.
White. Clean-shaven. And young; there was an ungainliness in his carriage, a body gotten too big, too fast; a ship with no one at the helm. His thighs were like grain sacks. If he had more growing to do, his full size would be terrifying.
He took another step.
I hunched closer to the screen, as if I could meet him halfway.