“It’s not true. I do care. And-and I fear I have-from your reaction I am very concerned. I must know if the Vangs are safe.”
“Just get the money. Please do your job. Get the money. Have your secretary call me when you have the money. That is all I have to say.”
“Let me help to protect the Vangs. I have a friend-”
“No more of your help.” He walked out on her, shaking his head.
9
N INA PICKED UP A SANDWICH in Meyers at the deli and ate it while driving, wondering how long a long Monday could last. A margarita might have temporarily eased her own misery, but that would only lead to more trouble, so she settled for a V8. Although Dr. Mai’s reaction had not been entirely unexpected, his vehemence unsettled her. To prep herself for her next appointment with the girls from the campground, she turned into the Starlake Building parking lot, mentally rehashing the meeting she had hosted in her office with Brandy and Angel four days before, on Thursday.
The two women had shown up at Nina’s office for an emergency appointment late in the afternoon. Although they refused to say why they needed to see her so hastily, Sandy squeezed them in before leaving to run an errand. “The girl that called sounded scared. Terrified.”
“An abusive husband?” Nina asked. Sad that that would be her first thought, but experience taught unhappy lessons.
“I don’t think so.”
One wore her peroxided hair short in rough layers, the other had swinging shoulder-length brown hair, but Nina needed only one look at their wide gray eyes. “You’re sisters,” she said, rising to greet them.
“Angelica Guillaume and Brandy Taylor,” the blond said, shaking her hand. “Call us Angel and Brandy. Thanks for seeing us on such short notice.”
They flopped into the orange client chairs, but Nina could see their casual ease was a pose. The muscles in their identically wiry legs remained tense, as if ready to propel them right back out the door. To give them a minute to orient themselves and calm down, Nina waited while they commented on her view of Lake Tahoe and admired the Washoe baskets on the wall. Nina quickly figured out that the blond, Angel, acted as leader. Twenty-three to Brandy’s nineteen, she wore a hip-hugging skirt and a tiny black cotton shirt that stopped just below the rib cage. Her face was in sharp focus: red lips, each lash carefully highlighted with mascara. Brandy, considerably taller and vaguer, wore a cotton floral skirt and loose sweater. She drooped behind her sister.
“What can I do for you?” Nina asked.
“Brandy saw a murderer,” Angel said.
Nina pulled out the legal pad. She took notes while they told their story in fits and starts with constant sisterly interruptions. The trouble had started right before Labor Day weekend, the week before.
“Brandy. You can’t just leave Bruce and run away to our house every time you have a fight,” Angel’s husband, Sam, said. “If you’re going to marry the guy, you’ve got to learn to work things out-”
“This wasn’t a fight. It’s over.”
The phone rang, Bruce again. Sam wanted to talk to him but Brandy snatched the phone away, slamming it into the cradle. “This is none of your business!”
“Like hell it isn’t!”
At that point, baby Jimmy and two-year-old Kimberly began to bawl. Sam, heading for the bathroom, the Tahoe cabin’s only refuge, tripped on a bag of groceries and let loose with a string of shouted curses. The children cried louder.
Angel turned off the kitchen faucet and saved the day, bustling in and plopping the kids in front of cartoons with crackers.
“We haven’t had a minute to talk, Angel,” Brandy complained. “I have nowhere else to go. I’m sorry if I’m getting on Sam’s nerves, but I’m hurting!”
“Don’t worry about Sam. He likes you, but he gets cranky when we’re all crammed in here like this. Listen, Bran, let’s do like we used to when Mom and Dad got weird on us,” Angel said. “Let’s split. It’s a long weekend. Just give me an hour to arrange the kids and someone to cover me at the salon.”
Unfortunately, by the time they had located two musty sleeping bags and properly provisioned themselves with graham crackers, chocolate, wine, marshmallows, and sweet rolls from Raley’s, the campgrounds at Richardson’s, D. L. Bliss State Park, and Nevada Beach were full. The ranger advised them to try the Campground by the Lake, right smack in the middle of South Lake Tahoe.
“Damn,” Brandy said. “Why didn’t we think of this? It’s Labor Day weekend, the worst time in the world for camping. We’re stuck in the center of town-unless you want to drive some more?”
“We’re not likely to find any vacancies for miles around here and it’s actually a really nice campground. Let’s see if we can find something. I’m sick of driving around and we still have to put the tent up.”
They amused themselves surfing the radio until they got to the campground at the corner of Rufus Allen Boulevard and Highway 50, finding it also full. “Let’s take a look anyway,” Angel said.
“Oh, forget it. It’s getting so late. Let’s just go back to your place and try again in the morning. Shoot. Sam’s going to hate it if we come back tonight. Did you see what he did when we drove away?”
“He has got a silly way of waving good-bye.”
“That was his victory salute, Angel.”
“He’s just kidding. He loves me madly,” Angel said. “I’m so hot he couldn’t do anything else. Watch this.” She leaned out the car window and gave the ranger on duty at the entrance a sexy smile and a long look down the front of her tank top and they were through the gate without paying the day-use fee in about a second, giggling like when they were kids.
Sure enough, around a bend toward the back, they found a family of five pulling up stakes on a large dome tent. “Ze miracle she is arrived,” Angel told Brandy, then, out the car window, “You leaving?”
“Sure are,” said the wife, tossing a picnic blanket and cooler into the back of an old blue minivan. The kids were stuffing bags of chips and cookies into brown bags, handing them off like a bucket brigade toward the car.
“Any chance we could grab your spot?”
The wife laughed. “Believe me, you don’t want it.”
Angel put the car into park. She and Brandy both got out of the car and approached. “Why not? Is it haunted or something?”
“You could say that.” She jogged her head in the direction of the next camp over. “Coupla lowlife rowdies.”
“They come over here and cause you any trouble?” Brandy asked.
“No. Nothing like that. Drinking, carousing. Using foul language. People like that are trouble, just being alive.”
Brandy reached into her purse. “Here,” she said. “Here’s thirty bucks for your campsite. You already paid, right?”
The woman’s face brightened. “Yes, we did. Only for the one night. But not this much.”
“We’d be so grateful if you’d just let us camp here tonight.”
“Just so you know what you’re getting into. You’ve been warned.”
While setting up the tent and bags, they had a good laugh over old farts who couldn’t take a joke or a little profanity now and then. Luckily, setting up the tent turned out to be a snap. They saw no sign of the so-called troublesome neighbors and decided the people in the orange tent next to them must have zoned out early.
By ten o’clock, they had a fire crackling, had stuffed themselves full of sweet goodies, and started in on the wine. So fun! Trees and stars surrounding them like comforters, and all of it totally safe, just like summers at camp.
“I hate drinking wine after I eat. You waste the full effect,” Brandy said. “Harder to get to that pleasantly blurry, sentimental stage.”
“Hasn’t stopped you. You have definitely reached that place.”
Brandy leaned back against a log and twisted her hair into a bun in back. “What a relief to be somewhere quiet. You know I love your kids,” she said, taking a swig from the bottle, “but it’s nice to get away.”