"What happened on the ride home?"
"My damn car threw a rod. Cost me two grand. I didn't feel right about asking my fellow campers to chip in, but they could have offered. It put a slight pall on my memory of the trip. But still"-he put the picture back into the folder-"I guess it was worth it. Getting away is always worth it."
"Yes it is." Gina by now was seated at the far end of the couch, and she turned to him. "So what can I do for you, Jedd?"
"I don't know, really. I was out at one of Horace's endless events tonight just over at the Fairmont-you know Horace Tremont?"
"Not personally, but of course."
"You know he's my father-in-law?"
"I remember reading about all that when you got married. Your wife is Lexi, right?"
"Right. The lovely Lexi." He smiled, but his inflection put an ironic spin on the words. "Anyway, it seems that Horace and some other of his kingmaker friends wanted to feel out my interest in running for the Senate."
"The U.S. Senate? Would you want that?"
He shrugged, at least feigning nonchalance. "It's something to think about. I'll be termed out next year in the Assembly. I'm going to want to do something. I don't know, it might be fun. We'll see. It's a long way off. Anyway," he continued, "when the meeting broke up, I got to wondering how things had gone after you talked with Stuart. Since I was so close to you up here, I took a chance and drove by and saw the light on and thought you might be up."
"I'm surprised you knew I still lived here."
He shrugged, smiled. "Tell you the truth, I wasn't a hundred percent sure until I saw your name in the mail slot. But I don't think I could have imagined you anywhere else. The place looks great, by the way. Terrific furniture. Cool art. I don't even remember the bar."
"That's because it wasn't here the last time you were. I remodeled about ten years ago, then added some stuff for David, even though we spent most of our time together at his place."
"Well, you always had great taste. It's beautiful." He raised his glass, toasted her and drank a sip. "So," he said. "Stuart. How'd it go?"
Relieved to turn away from the personal stuff about herself, Gina took a sip of the scotch. She felt herself begin to relax. "Finally, okay. It took the phone call, then a trip down to San Mateo and a lot of convincing, but he's coming in and giving himself up tomorrow, ten o'clock. Very reluctantly, I might add. But he'll show."
"You must have been persuasive as hell. When I talked to him, he wasn't spending any time in jail, period."
"Well, he's not that much better, but I got him to go along."
"How'd you do that?"
Gina smiled. "My usual. Equal parts charm, guile and threats. I made him an offer he couldn't refuse."
Conley enjoyed the phrase. "I thought he was a grieving widower."
"Not that kind of an offer, Jedd." She lifted her legs up onto the couch and tucked them under her. "So the Senate thing? Is that what you're uptight about?"
Conley paused, threw her a direct look. "You don't let much get by you, do you?"
"You'd be surprised. You said it was work and life. Running for the Senate seemed to qualify."
"Well." He sipped his drink. "Sometimes the profile is difficult to manage, that's all. It gets inside you." Apparently making up his mind to tell her about it, he went on. "As for uptight, I had to let go my assistant today and if history's any judge, she's going to slap me with some kind of bullshit lawsuit, when the plain truth is the woman was just incompetent and couldn't do the job. But you fire anybody nowadays, you become the bad guy. You know this. Hell, everybody knows it, and still it goes on." He sighed in frustration. "Anyway, it's done now. I'm just hoping I documented everything correctly. We'll see what happens." "Well, if you need a lawyer…"
He chortled quietly. "I'll keep you in mind, thanks. Maybe she won't do anything. Because God knows I made sure I never did anything even remotely suggestive around her. If there's one thing I've learned in life, if you're going to mess around, you don't dip your pen in the company inkwell. If you choose to mess around at all, that is." He drank off some more of his scotch.
A silence, pregnant with their mutual history, gathered in the spaces between the low-volume tinkle of piano music from Gina's radio.
Jedd finally looked down the length of the couch at her. "You know, Gina, I said it the other day when you came to the Travelodge, and I meant it then, but I'll say it again. You haven't aged a day in twenty years."
"Not true," she said, "I've aged about twenty years, and I feel every one of them."
"Well, you don't show them. No makeup, hair still wet… and look at you right now. You're just incredible."
She gave him a long and piercing look. A smile tickled the corners of her mouth, and then slowly she shook her head from side to side. "I don't think so, Jedd. Nice try, but it wouldn't be a good idea."
"It was never a bad idea with us. If memory serves, and it does."
"Yes, it does. But it would be now. A bad idea."
"Why? What would be different?"
"You being married, for one thing."
"Lexi wouldn't ever have to know. We used to be pretty discreet, if I recall."
"But I would know, Jedd. A girl's got to have a few rules, and not sleeping with married men is one of mine."
"Okay, we won't sleep." "No," she said.
He wagged his head back and forth. No hard press, but he was enjoying the game. "It doesn't really seem right."
"It does to me, I'm afraid." She finished her Oban and got herself upright, off the couch. "I'm flattered, Jedd, really. You've made my week. But no's got to mean no."
"Fair enough, if you really mean it." He was up, then, closing the small space between them, standing in front of her. "I'll make a deal with you. If you can still say no after one small kiss, I'll take it as your final answer."
She looked up into his eyes, confident enough, amused enough, to give him a full smile. "My momma didn't raise no fools, Jedd. Now you can either finish your drink and go, or you can go right now, but we're not doing this. Any little part of it. You need to go home and kiss your wife."
"She'll be in bed."
"So wake her up."
"Come on, Gina. It's not about her. It's about you and me."
"There is no you and me, Jedd." Ducking around him, giving herself room, she stopped behind the couch. "If you leave your wife, after the divorce is final, I might let you buy me a drink, and we'll see where that might take us. But even then, it's not a promise. It's a maybe."
"You're a cruel woman, Roake."
"I am," she admitted. "And getting crueler all the time." Crossing over to the door, she put her hand on the knob and turned back to face him. "Now, are you going to finish your drink first or just walk?"
Accepting defeat with a nod, Jedd toasted her silently again, and drained his drink. Placing the glass carefully on the coffee table, he got to the now-open door and stopped. "You can't blame a guy for trying," he said.
"Well, you can a little bit," she said. "Good night, Jedd." With a gentle shove, she moved him along until he was outside, then closed the door behind him and, with a sudden emphasis, she threw the dead bolt hard enough to make sure he heard it.
It took Juhle about an hour with his cell phone-tracking technicians to trace the approximate location from which Gina had called him to arrange Stuart Gorman's surrender the next morning, and most of another hour to arrange for two SF police officers and their squad car and some San Mateo County SWAT-team backup to meet him when he closed in for the arrest.
Cell phone technology possibly hadn't been much a part of the normal police arsenal the last time Gina had worked a major case, but now Juhle thought that everyone in the crime business must know that it was child's play to pinpoint a locale from a phone call. Wyatt Hunt had told him in passing that Gina had been out of the game awhile, and that Stuart was her first murder case ever, but even so he was amazed and happily surprised when she called him on her cell phone in Stuart's presence.