I considered the situation briefly. “I don’t see how any harm was done,” I said. “I’d have preferred your keeping my personal life to yourself, but it’s too late to worry about that now.”
“I lied a little bit and said you’d given me some of the information, but what I’d really come to ask him was something else. I told him Ethan’s concerns that Daddy’s medication might have affected his mind. Dr. Reed blew his stack. The guy’s a basket case. He wanted to know why everybody was suddenly so interested. He said my father didn’t suffer dementia or any other mental impairment. He was taking a placebo and it wouldn’t have had that effect.”
“Good news for me and bad for you,” I said. “I guess the will’s back in effect.”
“You don’t have to make jokes about it.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be flip.”
“Anyway, I didn’t see why he had to get so huffy. I felt like I really put my foot in it. And then to make matters worse, this other business came up.”
“Please don’t make me guess.”
“Well, I knew one of those homeless people gave you a bottle of Daddy’s pills . . .”
I cut in, saying, “Who told you that?”
“Henry.”
I was close to pressing her further when I picked up the unspoken message. “And you told Dr. Reed?”
I was not actually shrieking, but she must have guessed the level of my outrage from the expression on my face.
“I didn’t know it was any big secret.”
“But why would you do that? Why in the world would you do that? Why would the subject even come up?”
“Because he said if I went through Daddy’s things I should keep an eye out. He said fourteen pills were missing and I said you had them.”
“Is the concept of minding your own business completely foreign to you? I told you not to go out there. I knew no good would come of it.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose. I mean, I went on purpose, but I didn’t mean to make trouble. It just came out. I was trying to help. I was trying to smooth things over.”
“So now what happens?”
“Nothing. He’d appreciate it if you’d return them. He says addicts will take any drug they get their hands on in hopes of getting buzzed.”
“But those are placebos, so what’s the risk?”
“I’m telling you what he said. Daddy signed a form and agreed to abide by the rules.”
“But your father didn’t abide by the rules, Anna, which is why they kicked him out. Dr. Reed was the one who made the decision, so as far as I’m concerned, all bets are off.”
“I understand why you’re irritated. You already went out there once, but there’s no big rush. He said by the end of the week would be fine.”
“This isn’t a negotiation. I’m not giving him anything. I didn’t sign an agreement, so the rules don’t apply to me.”
“You can’t refuse. He has a government grant. He has to account for everything. With a clinical trial, you can’t just do anything you please. There are strict guidelines.”
“Strict guidelines. Wow. I don’t know what to say.”
“This is stupid. I’m not going to sit here and argue.”
“That is the best news I’ve had so far.”
“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal of it.”
“Because I’m having a bad day and you’re not helping me, okay? Neither is Linton Reed.”
“Well, you don’t have to take that attitude. He said if you didn’t want to make the drive to the university, he’d stop by and pick them up himself.”
“So now he’s the pill police?”
“He has a responsibility.”
“Well, I don’t doubt that. Happily he has no idea where I live.”
That’s when I got the big blue eyes.
“Do not tell me you gave him my address.”
She dropped her gaze. “When he asked, I gave him my address. What was I supposed to say?”
I stood up and leaned across the desk. My voice had dropped so low I wasn’t sure she’d hear what I was saying unless she knew how to read lips. “Please get out of my office. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you. If you so much as catch sight of me, you better run the other way. Have I made myself clear?”
She got up without another word and left, slamming the door behind her.
After I’d cleaned the office from top to bottom, I realized I’d probably gone too far with her. What difference did it make if he knew where to find me? True, I harbored the suspicion that he might have had a hand in Pete’s death, but he didn’t know that. As far as I was concerned, he had no power over me and he had no leverage, so what was there to sweat? If he had the gall to come knocking at my door, I’d tell him I’d tossed the pills. That settled, I retrieved said bottle from my shoulder bag, pulled the rug back, opened my floor safe, and locked the pills away.
• • •
Cheney called late in the afternoon, saying, “I have a one-hour dinner break. I’m buying if you want to join me.”
He knew full well I wouldn’t refuse.
I said, “You did talk to Sanford Wray, right?” I held the handset loosely, pen and paper at the ready in case I needed to take notes.
“First thing this morning. Hey, we’re old friends by now. He asked me to call him Mr. Wray. That’s how tight we are.”
“What’d he say about the gun?”
“I’m not doing this on the phone. We’re starting to cook on this, I can tell you that. We picked up partial prints. Thumb and index finger.”
“Oh, come on, Cheney. Don’t make me wait. I want to know what went on.”
“I’ll pick you up in an hour. How do you feel about eating breakfast at dinnertime?”
“I love the idea.”
• • •
I was home and waiting at the curb when Cheney came around the corner in his red Mercedes-Benz Roadster. I found myself mentally cocking my head. I was thinking about Robert Dietz and his red Porsche, wondering if Jonah Robb had a little red sports car as well. Cheney leaned across the seat and opened the passenger-side door. I slid into the black leather bucket seat and said, “Is this the car you had when I saw you last?”
“That was an ’87. This is the ’88. A 560SL. You like it?”
“I thought the other one was a 560SL.”
“It was. I was so crazy about the car I got a duplicate.”
He drove us out onto the wooden pier, the big timbers rumbling beneath his wheels. The restaurant was three blocks from my apartment but it wasn’t one I frequented. We ate at a table overlooking the harbor with its modest traffic in powerboats and fishing vessels. Not surprisingly, the restaurant was given over to a nautical theme: black-and-white photographs of sailboats, fish netting draped along the walls, distressed wood, buoys, and other maritime artifacts, including fiberglass fish reproductions—two marlins, three sharks, and a school of sailfish.
As we ate, I wondered idly if you could classify men according to their breakfast preferences. Cheney was a pancake kind of guy; crisp bacon, breakfast sausage, eggs over easy. He piled it all together, poured syrup over the top, and cut it into a big nasty pile that he devoured with enthusiasm. He wasn’t a big man but he never seemed to gain weight.
I ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, rye toast, and orange juice. When we finally pushed our plates aside and the waitress had refreshed our coffee cups, I said, “Are you going to volunteer the information or do I have to beg?”
“I’m happy to tell you the story, but I’m taking out the filler. You know how it is, you show up at a guy’s door asking about a gun, there’s all this preliminary bullshit while they decide if they should hire legal counsel before letting you set foot on the premises. Okay, so the nitty-gritty. He answers the door. We introduce ourselves and I ask if he has a forty-five-caliber Ruger semiautomatic registered to him. This is me and Jonah by the way. He says he does. We ask where the gun is. He says his bed table drawer. We say we’d like to see the weapon if he has no objections. He says, ‘None whatever.’