“What do you mean, a woman like Lacy?” I asked.
“Well, hell, think about it,” Dorrie said, as if I missed the obvious. “Lacy always thought she should be both the soprano and the conductor in her own opera, if you know what I mean. But she peaked in high school. Head cheerleader, then has-been. And look at what you’ve accomplished.”
“Jesus, Dorrie, there are eight or nine Nobelists in Berkeley. For Lacy to compare herself to me, a face on TV, that’s just-”
“Normal,” she said firmly. “It’s bad enough for her when Kevin sees you on the tube, but when she heard that you’re in town and he’s hanging out at your house, well, she just can’t handle it.”
“Hardly hanging out,” I said. “He came over once, on police business.”
“That isn’t the way Lacy heard it.”
“Heard it from whom?”
“That damn Mrs. Loper. I think she gets off on stirring things up between people.”
I nodded; it was true.
Jean-Paul edged his way back to me, trying to keep slippery homemade flan from sliding off his slick plastic plate. He offered me his spoon. “Try this.”
I did; it was wonderful. “Jean-Paul, this is an old friend, Dorrie Riley.”
“Dorrie Riley Ross,” she said, glowing a bit as she offered her hand to Jean-Paul. Dorrie wasn’t unattractive, and I have to admit that when Jean-Paul turned his attention toward her, just being polite, I slipped a few inches closer to him, making it clear that he was not available. And did not admire myself for doing so.
I said, “Please reassure Lacy that she has no reason to concern herself with me.”
“But she does, you know,” Dorrie said, giving my hand a quick squeeze. “She does.”
Dorrie moved off into the crowd. I saw her speak to Beto before she slipped out the side gate.
There were dark circles under Jean-Paul’s eyes. I said, “Had enough fun for one day?”
“Enough for several.” He patted his flat belly. “And more than enough to eat.”
It was time to say our good-byes. We found Beto tidying the buffet table.
“Thank you,” I said, walking into his hug.
“So happy you came,” he said. He offered his hand to Jean-Paul. “Hope you can join us again next year.”
When I asked where we could find his father, he said, “He knocked himself out getting things ready; you saw how he was. Sometimes when he’s tired, he gets, I don’t know, combative. So, I put him to bed to keep him from getting into trouble.”
“Tell him we had a wonderful time.”
Beto was grinning when he asked, “Did your dad have a good time, too?”
“I’m sure he did,” I said.
We left by the side gate.
“So?” Jean-Paul wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close as we walked down the driveway past the garage. “See any ghosts tonight?”
“Many.” My eyes trailed to the vase of white roses dumped atop a very full trash barrel. “Many.”
Chapter 12
“I can think of only two places in this house where Dad might hide a gun,” I said. “One is his desk, but I have already emptied it. The other is his workbench in the garage.”
Jean-Paul threw his head back and laughed, something I had rarely seen him do. I looked over at him as I slipped off my jeans. “Sir?”
“My dear.” He pulled me against him and laid us back on the bed. “I am doing my very best impression of the romantic Frenchman, but, alas, apparently to no effect.”
I rolled on top and straddled him. “You’re doing a fabulous job of it, Monsieur. Top drawer. A-number-one. Le dernier cri.”
“But?”
“Your target, moi, is just too damn scattered at the moment to focus fully on the program.”
“Et donc?”
“So, give me ten minutes for a quick look, and I promise that when I return I will give all my attention in mind as well as body to your fine efforts.”
“A look in the garage?”
“A quick one.” I kissed him.
His wheels were turning, thinking. After a moment, he lifted me off him and said, “D’accord.”
I pulled my jeans back on, found my flip-flops, and hurried down the stairs through the quiet house and out through the butler’s pantry to the garage. Roy and Lyle had taken Uncle Max with them to Yoshi’s, a jazz club in San Francisco. Max’s note said he would stay overnight and take BART back in the morning. He’d left us the keys to his rented car in case we needed wheels in the meantime.
Lyle had finished sorting through most of the drawers and bins in and around Dad’s workbench before George Loper flamed out and progress halted. I rummaged through the remaining jumble, finding nothing more interesting than a book about constructing martin houses, a project Dad apparently never got around to, possibly because mosquitoes are not a big problem in Berkeley. I tossed the book into a trash bag and kept searching. Surely Dad wouldn’t hide a firearm where anyone might happen upon it. So, then, where? Unless he had disposed of it.
I had a wrench in one hand and a rubber mallet in the other, standing beside the workbench, looking around for inspiration, when the door to the side yard opened.
“Larry?” I raised the wrench as a reflex when he came through the door.
“Whoa.” Larry held up both hands. “Don’t throw that thing at me, okay?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I saw you.” He gestured toward the window in the side door. “And I saw you were alone, so I thought, No time like the present.”
“That door was locked; I checked it.”
“Yeah, well.” Sheepishly, he held up a key. “I know where your dad hid it.”
“Have you been coming in here all along?”
“Shit, yeah,” he said, sounding almost angry. “I told you that.”
“No, you did not.”
“I told you I was looking after the garden, didn’t I?” he said, as if speaking to an idiot as he aimed a thumb toward the rack of garden tools. “How the hell did you think I could do that without, oh, I don’t know, maybe a rake and a hoe?”
I put down the wrench and held out my hand for the key, which he gave me. The key was old, rusty where it attached to a small metal ring, but shiny, recently oiled where it fit into the lock.
“How long have you known about the key?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Just about always, I guess.”
For a long time, the same key could open all three of the small garage doors: one to the side yard, one to the backyard, and one into the house; my parents used the garage more as a workshop and garden shed than as a place to park cars. Somewhere along the way, when I was nine or ten, Dad had installed a new lock and a deadbolt on the door into the house. Max told me that Isabelle had been found in my room one night, watching me sleep. Any parent would have changed the lock after that.
“Did you tell Isabelle Martin where to find the key?”
“Mighta,” he tossed off as if giving her access to the house-to me-were of no consequence.
“You went into the house, too, didn’t you?”
“Just one time,” he said. “I thought there was no one home, but then I heard someone running the vacuum cleaner and I got the hell out.”
“No,” I said. “More recently, like night before last.”
“What are you talking about?”